Does It Matter?

Gospel: Luke 21: 29-33

While in seminary, St. Aloysius Gonzaga was playing billiards with other seminarians during recreation.  The topic arose: what would you do if it was announced that the second coming of Jesus would take place in two hours?  Some seminarians stated they would rush to the chapel and pray fervently.  Others said they would seek out a priest and go to confession.  When the others asked Aloysius what he would do, he replied, "I'd keep playing pool."

This endless nonsense of the end times reveals a great deal about our insecurities in our own faith lives as Christians.  The above story indicates that we are not really living the Christian life as we ought most of the time, and we in fact have shallow, weak faith.  If we were so confident in our faith lives, we would be going about doing what Jesus did while on earth, extending love and mercy in concrete actions wherever we go without a worry at all about topics like the end times or even our own individual death.  

Aloysius had the serenity of faith to not worry about such questions of end times or his own death.  He died young, before ever being ordained.  He contracted the plague while caring for the sick in local hospitals.  He was doing what we are all called to do - caring for others, providing healing, liberation, and nourishment for others.  If we do likewise, we can set aside the useless anxiety about the end times and our impending mortality, for all shall we well with us.