Trust in God but tie your camel, the Arab proverb shrewdly recommends. We are in the world but not of the world and need to combine the qualities of serpents and doves in our dealings in the marketplace.

Is it me, or is it the times? Apocalyptic writings used to seem so surreal and unbelievable that those parts of the Bible—say, Revelation, Daniel, Ezekiel, Malachi, and snippets of Paul and the gospels—just didn’t have a hearing in me. I dismissed those passages as morbid and fantastic, products of an age that didn’t have its act together and could only envision release from its chaos in terms of total annihilation.

One day people were standing around talking about the Temple, remarking how beautiful it was, the splendor of its stonework and memorial gifts. Jesus said, “All this you’re admiring so much—the time is coming when every stone in that building will end up in a heap of rubble.”

One summer, years ago, I was an activities counselor in charge of 16 young boys, ages 5 to 10. I would often load them into a big van and off we’d go on fun adventures. Joey, a high-school kid from the same childcare institution, was assigned to help me, and thank God for that, because while I drove he had the unenviable task of keeping the boys in line.

Apocalypses begin and end in the heart of each believer. The journey toward divine revelation, as any mystic will tell you, is an interior trek. The dark night of the soul is nothing less than the battle of the good and evil within us.

In the presence of God, let us pray for God's gracious forgiveness.

Perseverance is the sister of patience, the daughter of constancy, the friend of peace, the cementer of friendships, the bond of harmony, and the bulwark of holiness.