LINEAR NOT CYCLIC

Friday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time
Lk 21:29-33

We are once again concluding a liturgical cycle. This coming Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent, we begin reading from the C Cycle of readings. Even in our liturgical life, we follow a particular cycle. Life is a cycle.

Philosophers of ancient Greece believed that history followed a cyclic pattern, that history repeats itself. They claimed that great disaster wiped out the world every 3,000 years or so. After the great calamity, human history started all over again until the next catastrophe.

When we look around us, such an ancient belief seems to be true. Earthly life is a cycle of living and dying. Growth follows a cycle of being dependent and independent. Seasons come in a cycle of winter, spring, summer and autumn. Even waste materials are recycled. Everything seems to follow a cyclic pattern.

But Christians should not believe so. We believe the contrary instead. History follows a linear pattern. It moves in a straight line. It progresses towards a definite direction, a specific goal. History does not repeat itself. And we avoid repeating most especially history’s mistakes.

The definite goal of our life is the final coming of God’s kingdom. It is the definitive and complete establishment of God’s kingdom in our midst. It is when the new heaven and the new earth are finally revealed in their fullness.

Jesus inaugurated the coming of the new heaven and the new earth. In His person, the kingdom of God already breaks in into human history. But we are to complete it by participating in His work.

Each day we strive to love like Jesus, the new heaven becomes more and more our new earth.