Season of Forever is based on the Sunday liturgical readings of the 31st week through Christ the King of Year B. The choices we make now impact eternity. The second coming, the judgement is coming to everyone. The scriptures of this Season of Forever make this clear. God’s mercy gives the gift of time so that more shall choose to change their ways through Christ’s intercession and the prayers of the faithful. The Church celebrates All Saints Day, All Souls Day and the feast of Christ the King during these last few weeks of the Church Year B.
To Listen audio: Season of Forever
Program Outline of Living Seasons of Change Season of Forever
The “here after” loads heavily on the hearts of those who have turned away from God. Jesus Christ is the King of Kings. When the “ordination” of the king takes place all will bow down and give homage. The Lord allows disobedience and obedience now through freewill to operate. At the Second Coming the King shall reign over heaven and earth without dissension, without the disobedience that flows through the hearts. His Glory reveals all to the hearts on that fateful day. Various points of scripture lead us to understand that the choices you make now impact eternity. The second coming, the judgement is coming to everyone. The scripture is clear in this prophecy. Various scriptures key in on “forever”; recognition of now vs. eternity. Note the readings point to the signs. The key is hope and not fear. There is a sense of urgency to lead others to Christ. Points out the poor widow’s joy of self-sacrificial giving. Give what you have—what you have learned. The readings all tie in. Open your eyes and you shall see this.
Script
Patti: Welcome to Living Seasons of Change and the Season of the Forever. Our scriptures this season speak of the second coming of Christ. It includes the feasts of All Saints Day and Christ the King. I’m Patti Brunner and my co-host is Msgr. David LeSieur, a Catholic priest of the Diocese of Little Rock. Welcome, Monsignor!
Msgr. David LeSieur: Thank you, Patti. The scriptures of the 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time through the end of Year B help us to recall and pray “Lord, You are the Alpha and Omega. Everything begins and ends with You; there is no end. Thank You for coming to us and giving us the chance to live forever with You.”
Patti: The Gospel of the 31st Sunday is “Love God with all your and all your mind and all your soul –
Msgr.: And your neighbor as yourself!
Patti: The first reading from Deuteronomy tells us if we keep the commandments we will have a long life and prosperity. When you realize how important it is to love God with all your heart and soul, Jesus says, “You’re not far from the kingdom of God”. Jesus shall be the King of Kings forever. When the “ordination” of our king takes place all will bow down and give homage. Until then, the Lord allows disobedience and obedience through freewill to operate. At the Second Coming the King shall reign over heaven and earth without dissension, without the disobedience that flows through the hearts. His Glory will reveal all to the hearts on that fateful day.
Msgr.: Whether you are lost or saved that will be revealed. Everyone will be able to see Jesus’ true glory. It is hidden right now. It’s sacramental. It was hidden in His humanity except at the Transfiguration and when they saw Him after the Resurrection. You and I and all people today don’t see that at all. We see Jesus in the Eucharist and experience Him in the Word and in the sacraments. At the time of the second coming, when the final judgment occurs, everyone will see everything as it was meant to be. The plan of God will be revealed in all its fullness and we will understand it. We will understand every bit of suffering that we have ever endured and will see how it fits into our salvation. We will even understand, God forbid, if anyone we knew and loved on this earth should not be in heaven, we’ll understand that, too. We’ll be okay with it. As sad as that might seem to us now, we will understand everything in God’s will and His plan. It will make perfect sense and we will be truly happy.
Patti: At that point our free will reaches completion. After He comes there will be no more dissention. We will all be on the same page and understand God’s plan.
Msgr.: Even if we are one of those goats moved to the left in Matthew 25:41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink.”[i]
Patti: We’ll understand. We’ll accept it because of God’s perfect judgment. We’ll understand that is the right thing for us.
Msgr.: It was our choice.
Patti: We have had the whole year’s readings to teach us about our free will choices. Now, the scriptures are keying in on the ‘forever’ business.
Msgr.: I love the way the Church’s liturgical year works out in this hemisphere. As the liturgical year winds down we get into harvest themes and end of time themes. We can see mirrored in nature what the Church and God is teaching us about end times; The end of our lives, the end of nature as we know it. Things come to fruition and are reaped and harvested. As Paul said in Galatians, “for a person will reap only what he sows, because the one who sows for his flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows for the spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit.”[ii] At the end we will see where our calling led us and that it was perfectly planned by God, and if we were able to agree; submit to it, live with it, then we will be at the place He wants us to be.
Patti: In His mercy the Lord has given us ‘time’: Time to choose Him and time enough to change our ways.
Msgr.: Like the parable in Luke’s gospel where the guy puts the manure around the fig tree; it gives it another year to bear fruit.[iii] Jesus gives us another chance: time to choose him.
Patti: We have the intercession of Jesus all this time, too, and the intercession of the faithful and the saints. On All Saints Day, reading from the Book of Revelation, we have the great multitude from every nation who survived the time of great distress.
Msgr.: Who washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb.
Patti: They continue to intercede for us. We see that on a very definite level whenever we see the miracles that take place through their intercession. We can ask their help – especially the patron saints and our name-sakes and confirmation saints.
Msgr.: On a side note, some people, when they have their babies baptized, the names they choose are not particularly Christian names. They might be more a family name or what they call “designer names”. For people who might say, “Why did you name your child that? Where is the saint’s name?” I just say, “That child has to make that name a saint’s name by the way she lives her life or he lives his life.” There was a time when Augustine was a pagan name but he made it a saint’s name.
Patti: That’s good! The second reading from I John, on All Saints Day, says, “We’re God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.[iv]
Msgr.: There are so many things that we don’t know, that don’t make any sense right now. Trust God and His judgment, He has perfect knowledge of things. At judgement we shall see Him as He is, not just face to face, but I think we shall see Him and understand what He had in His mind all along. He’ll say, “This is what I was getting at when I said this or when this happened here. This is what was in My mind.” And you’ll see how it all comes together.
Patti: We get little glimmers of that when the gospel quotes the Old Testament. You can see part of God’s pattern shining through; the thread showing that God has a plan that spans the centuries.
Msgr.: At the time Isaiah wrote his prophecies, he didn’t necessarily understand that they were going to be more fully revealed later; like his prophecies of the Suffering Servant or Immanuel. In them, we see a fuller understanding that the Suffering Servant was Jesus. Isaiah lived several hundred years before Jesus of Nazareth. God’s thread runs through all of this. On that day of final judgement it will be revealed fully and we will all “get it”.
Patti: All Saints Day celebrates the people that are in the fullness of God in heaven through martyrdom and through holy lives. We know there are people who are in God’s fullness right now. The day after All Saints Day, November 2, is All Soul’s Day, which is a day set aside by the Church to pray for those who have died who might still be in the process of being purified.
Msgr.: Purgation. It is interesting that the Church has proclaimed many persons as saints, which mean they are definitely in heaven with God, but the Church has never said anyone was in hell. We believe in hell and we believe there are people in hell but the Church has never singled out a person to say they are definitely in hell. I think that is wise because who knows what goes on in a person’s mind or heart at the last moment of life—before the lights go out.
Patti: We always have hope, expectant hope for our loved ones who have gone before us.
Msgr.: They might have lived a life we might wonder about, but God can touch a heart at the last moment. We talk about purgatory on All Soul’s Day. Purgatory is a Catholic teaching which is part of our tradition. A lot of folks don’t understand it. I think it is a beautiful doctrine that is very realistic. I know that when a person dies; if they go to purgatory, they are saved! They are going to heaven eventually. Most people have unfinished business when they die. They may have had the opportunity for priest to anoint them on their deathbed, to confess or to receive communion but that in itself does not mean they will go straight to heaven if they have unfinished business; if they have unrepented sin. Purgatory is a place for us to overcome the last vestiges of selfishness that accrues to us for our sinfulness. It is a beautiful teaching, a beautiful concept that God would say, “You’re not ready to see Me yet but I’m going to work with you. I am going to get you ready because I love you.
Patti: And when we talk about forever, purgation is not a forever state at all.
Msgr.: It’s temporary. In terms of human time on earth, it might last 7 seconds if you could term it like that, but in view of eternity it might seem to last a very long time. It is a stripping of the ego, which is a very painful process but is very necessary where we become fully the person God intended us to be when He created us. We mar that image with our sinfulness. Jesus is the perfect image of God. Purgation, purgatory reveals the image of Christ in us that God can see and say, “Yes, I know you. Come on up.”
Patti: We find hope through the 6th Chapter of John read on All Soul’s Day that Jesus will not reject anyone who comes to Him.
Msgr.: It says “Everyone who sees the Son and believes will have eternal life.” That’s part of the Bread of Life discourse.
Patti: And the Romans reading is really hopeful, too.
Msgr.: There is a choice of two readings from Romans, one from Chapter 5 and one from 6. Either one is beautiful but that first one, Chapter 5:5-11, says, “He proves His love, that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”[v] In fact, that is why He died for us.
Patti: Jesus looks at our sin with perfect judgment. Jesus does not say, “Okay, you are a sinner in your life, so, get away from me.” He says, “You were a sinner. Here is what I am offering you. Choose me.”
Msgr.: “I can work with you.” It is like the doctor that offers a healing or saving surgery, “If you will only let me do this for you. It will be painful but it will save your life.”
Patti: Our choices may be difficult. It may be setting aside something now to benefit the long run. We see that a in the 32nd Sunday in our two scriptures about the widows. The setting of the first widow, with Elijah in I Kings, is the middle of a drought. She has just a little bit of flour and oil left. She and her son are starving to death. That is their last little bit of provision. And Elijah shows up at her door saying, “First, fix something for me.”
Msgr.: And she shared her last meal with him. The last meal for her son and herself was shared with the prophet. Miraculously they ate for a year until the rains began!
Patti: This gives us an indication that sometimes you have to lay yourself out there in a seemingly hopeless situation. As you surrender to the Lord and trust in Him, He takes care of you. Miraculously, they ate for an entire year until the rains started. Look at that in terms of eternity; the Lord will give us what we need until the day He returns and then we will have abundance.
Msgr.: Maybe the Elijah reading is just a little microcosm of what you just said, that they had only a tiny bit of food, but when it was shared it lasted for a year. After the rains came they were good to go, they could reap or glean as much as they wanted. In terms of eternity, we have enough right now. God wants us to have enough to live on as we trust Him. Yet, eternity is when the divine rains come. It never ends. There is a limitless amount.
Patti: If you think about the gift that God has given us; the grace He has given us; the information He has given to us; He has revealed Himself to us a little, if we take that and share that with others we not only take care of ourselves but others are taken care of, too. It is like: I have a little knowledge of the Lord, I don’t have to keep it to myself just because I only have a little.
Msgr.: Some people might be ashamed to share what little they have and say, “I don’t know very much. You probably already know this so why even bother? I know less than you do about scriptures and the Lord” and, yet, that one little gift that person has of knowledge of the Lord might just be what the other person needs to hear. We can, metaphorically, put our light under a bushel basket. Even though it is a very tiny light, putting it under a bushel basket will snuff it out.
Patti: A little can be a lot. On the 32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, in Mark’s gospel, Jesus watches people giving donations at the temple. The rich are giving large sums, and then He notices a widow who puts in two coins worth a few pennies. Jesus says, “She has given more than anyone because she gave of her whole livelihood.” Again, it is not how much you have but what you are willing to give of what you have.
Msgr.: It sounds as if she gave everything she had. She gave her last two cents. She could have bought bread with it. She put it in the temple treasury. Jesus says, “All of the others who have given didn’t give as much as she did. They gave from their surplus. She gave from her want.” That is true giving. That’s giving in faith.
Patti: How much of what we have, as far as our knowledge of God, do we ever share with others? Monsignor, I know you do a lot.
Msgr.: That’s part of my job. You expect me to do that from the pulpit. I do that willingly and gladly for it is part of my job. Yet, on a personal level, how much do I share with my friends or my family? Just on a personal level, aside from being a priest, I have to ask myself and challenge myself, do I share my knowledge with my friends, with my family? Not enough, not enough. We assume, especially if we are all Catholic, as my family is, we assume we know this stuff instead of personal sharing of what the Lord is actually doing in your life, like a Cursillo small group where people share what the Lord has done with them that past week and what they have done in faith. We don’t do enough of that; even informally.
Patti: I think you are right. The second reading the 32nd Sunday is from Hebrews and it is talking about Christ’s sacrifice and how it needed to be offered only once because it was a perfect offering. He gave all He had.
Msgr.: When Jesus gives, it is enough. It is perfect.
Patti: On the 33rd week we hear from the prophet Daniel.
Msgr.: Daniel is an apocalyptic book.
Patti: The Book of Revelation and Daniel’s parallel a lot as we look to the Second Coming of Christ.
Msgr.: I wouldn’t be surprised if the author of Revelation was certainly very familiar with Daniel’s writings.
Patti: Certainly they both experienced the same Holy Spirit! Daniel talks about how the time before the Lord comes back is going to be rough. He talked about the stress, horror and darkness.
Msgr.: There is plenty of that to go around right now. Mark’s Gospel contains an apocalyptic passage, too, from Jesus.
Patti: The readings point to the signs. Chapter 13 of Mark– tribulation, the sun and the moon darken, stars falling. No one knows the day or hour but if you look for the signs you are going to get some hints of the end of time. It is not going to come so suddenly that you are not going to know what’s going on.
Msgr.: Right, the last times could last a thousand years in our times. People with discerning hearts will notice the signs of the times, and they will have an opportunity to repent, to change whatever is wrong in their lives and maybe to convince others to do the same. Famines and floods and natural disasters and all the bad things have been going on for a very, very long time. Christians of all the generations for 2,000 years can look upon these things as signs of the times. We need to make sure that we are not taking part in bad things. We have plenty of opportunity to notice the signs and if the signs are telling us that we need to repent, then we have time to repent. Someday we won’t. We just don’t know how much time we have.
Patti: It’s like in each generation the Lord allows a little tribulation to help us to get in the right mindset, to turn towards Him, to have the opportunity to turn back to Him.
Msgr.: I have heard when farmers plant their crops and they begin to send down roots, it is somewhat good for there to be a little dryness because it makes the roots go deeper searching for water, which strengthens the plants. You don’t want perfect conditions all the time. Even the little plant has to be challenged to send its roots down deeper to help insure a good harvest later. We are the same. God does challenge us.
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Patti Brunner: Welcome back! You’re listening to Living Seasons of Change. I’m Patti Brunner and I am talking with Msgr. David LeSieur about the Season of Forever. Some mystics of the Church have spoken of “Three Days of Darkness”[vi]. They place a sense of urgency to lead others to Christ.
Msgr.: Are these a physical darkness, like the eclipses?
Patti: I think so. There are various different details including an earthquake that covers the entire world. Then a darkness that lasts three days. When you are in that time of darkness, you should go indoors and light a blessed candle. Don’t look out because the demons will be released.
Msgr.: Kind like Passover. In Exodus[vii], three days of darkness was one of the nine plagues, the signs Moses used to get Pharaoh to free the Israelites.
Patti: And after the three days of darkness, there is to be a new dawning and things will be better than ever. That’s hopeful! The last Sunday of the year we have the feast, Christ the King, and we hear from Daniel again.
Msgr.: The “Son of Man coming in the clouds”; Jesus will be acknowledged as the king and ruler of all. Nothing equals or surpasses Him in His authority or His love. It also says He will hand everything over to His father. God the Father gave authority to Jesus[viii] and He will hand it back at the end of time. The Feast of Christ the King was developed not that long ago in the late 20’s when secularism was on the rise.
Patti Brunner: “Secularism is a way of life which leaves God out of man’s thinking and living and organizes his life as if God did not exist”[ix]. The Church set truth before the world with this feast but part of the world did not recognize truth.
Msgr. David LeSieur: Hitler was coming to power before World War II. That was the Third Reich. Reich in German means kingdom. It was supposed to be a thousand year “Reich”. Hitler was amazingly popular and crazy, but Germany was emerging from World War I and they were poor and ragged. As a defeated country in World War I, they were stripped of everything. Hitler comes along and says, “I’ll build us back up to the power we were.” People loved him and followed him. You know how that went.
In 1925 Pope Pius XI established this feast as a way of saying that there is only one king, only one person worthy of our worship. And that person is Jesus Christ.
Patti: On the Feast of Christ the King we have the gospel from John where Jesus is talking with Pilate.
Msgr.: “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said, “What is truth?” People today continue to wonder “what is truth?” What is that rock solid belief that I can have, that I can hang onto? There is so much fluidity out there in the world and nothing solid it seems.
Patti: Revelation also reminds us that the Lord is the Alpha and the Omega, the One who is, who was, who is to come. I think if everyone could comprehend time and eternity, there would be a lot of different choices made by people. Just like the woman who gave her last two cents. She understood eternity. The choices you make now impact eternity. Even if she was going to struggle in her poverty, she knew that this time on earth is such a brief, tiny portion of eternity that she wanted to work for the kingdom. She wanted to help bring people into the Lord.
Msgr.: The widow had a vision of where her money could be used. Her vision was larger than her being able to eat that day. We might also say her kingdom was not of this world. Her understanding of kingdom was far beyond this world. So, if she had two cents and gave it to the temple, she probably figured, “The Lord will take care of me”.
Patti: We step away from worrying, even when we are living in the midst of chaos, when we step back and say, “This, too, will pass because this is of the temporal world.” Even if it is for 100 years, it is just the snap of our fingers when we look at eternity and the joy that is to come forever and forever and forever.
Msgr.: Eternity is relative to my decisions today, like the little widow. Her decision was conditioned by her belief that “my life isn’t just here. I have something to look forward to. I believe in God and God is bigger than I am.” She had an eternal viewpoint that others did not have. The other persons who were dropping coins in the treasury that day, were probably believers but they didn’t have as sharp a view of eternity.
Patti: The poor widow found the joy of self-sacrificial giving. Like we said earlier: Give what you have—give what you have learned. Our time on earth, as brief as it is in the big picture, it is our time of decision making for the Lord, to choose Christ. If we do choose Christ, we can be with Him for all eternity. It is our free will to choose.
Msgr.: But choosing Christ here on earth, in some ways, as wonderful as it is, makes life more difficult because there is a cross involved with it. It involves responsibility to Church or prayer that takes our time. You know, accepting Jesus, what comes with that is more work. We don’t earn our salvation by works but we are called to the work of the kingdom. When asked, “What do we have to do?” Jesus said, “Your work is to believe in the One God sent.” So, our work is faith and everything that descends from that.
Patti: Scripture tells us we don’t know when the final judgment, the second coming of Christ, is to be. Only the Father knows. We should live with a sense of urgency that “this might be my last day. This might be my last day to choose Christ.” It could be.
Msgr.: Our initial choice for Christ in Baptism is confirmed when we recommit ourselves to the Lord in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We just have to keep ratifying that choice every day. “Lord, I choose You today. If I die before the day is over, I choose You.” If I am not thinking of You when that car hits me or when the heart attack comes, I want You to know that I choose You at this moment and I will continue to choose You as long as I have breath to do so. That’s lifelong commitment. We can do a morning offering when we get up in the morning, Liturgy of the Hours or daily Mass. There are ways of saying to the Lord “we choose You”.
Patti: No one is going to get out of judgment. The second coming, the judgement is coming to everyone. The scripture is clear in this prophecy.
Msgr.: It was St. John of the Cross who said, “We will be judged by love.” I think he might have been thinking of that scene in Matthew 25 where the sheep and the goats are separated based on whether or not they responded to the needs of others. Not based on sexual morality or anything else but how they helped or didn’t help other people.
Patti: –That you’ll be judged about how well you took care of the widows and orphans.
Msgr.: –And the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. We cannot escape judgment. Years ago when I was in college I had to read The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodo Dostoevsky, about 1,000 pages long. It is a Russian novel classic. The story is told by an old priest, Father Zosima, about this woman. She was a very, very selfish woman. She hated everybody. One day she was digging in her garden and a beggar walked by and said he was hungry so she pulled an old dirty onion out of the ground and threw it at him and said, “Here, eat this. It’s an onion.” At the final judgment when she died devils were pulling at her to take her to hell; angels were pulling on her to get her to heaven. God said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You did one kind act during your life. You gave that onion to the poor beggar. On the strength of that onion I will judge you.”
She held onto the onion and the devils were pulling at her. She said, “That’s my onion.” And she went down to hell because she couldn’t let go of that onion. That one good deed became that by which she was judged. We are judged on how we love. God was willing to give her credit for that one disinterested act of throwing an onion at an old beggar saying, “Here eat this.” It was an act of charity for her even though it was begrudgingly done. Even so, she still clung to the onion selfishly, and went to hell.
Patti: On our radio station, I heard about St. Clare who was fussing at the Lord because of a sinner who going to hell, saying, “Just give him to me and let me take care of him.” So, Clare pushed and prodded and got the guy into heaven but he was miserable. He hated Clare because he was there.
Msgr.: The sinner was not happy in heaven?
Patti: The sinner was not happy in heaven at all; just hated Clare for pushing him into it. So, she talked to the Lord and she got the man to a place that was neither heaven nor hell, just kind of out there. And he hated that because he realized that God’s judgment against him was so just that he deserved to be in hell and he was not happy where he was until he went to hell.
Msgr.: At that point he was honest.
Patti: Because of God’s perfect judgment that’s where he knew he should be. Finally, the Lord let him go to hell. By being in hell, he was giving God glory because it was perfect judgment. That gave him some completeness; some satisfaction. Because of the choices he made, he could not be happy anywhere but there and that somehow it was part of God’s divine order of things.
Msgr.: God didn’t make the man go to hell, he chose hell.
Patti: Through mortal sin we choose hell. You would be more miserable in His presence with mortal sin in your heart than in accepting your righteous judgement by going to hell.
Msgr.: Unless being in His presence totally changed you. But if your heart is so hardened that it is habitually hardened and not even God’s grace could reach you, then you wouldn’t be content anywhere else except in hell.
Patti: But today we still have time. We have time to ask the Lord to soften our heart. If someone happens to listen to our radio show and they have turned their back on God, there is still time to ask Him, to repent.
Msgr.: I often pray for all those who died during the day. At the end of the day I’ll pray for all the faithful departed and I’ll say, “Lord, grant eternal rest to all who died today especially the unrepentant.” I pray that at that last moment something will click and they will choose the Lord.
Patti: The Novena of First Fridays to the Sacred Heart of Jesus gives the promise that you will be given the grace of the chance of repentance before death.
Msgr.: Better not to wait until the last moment.
Patti: I agree.
Msgr.: Why take the chance? When you think of what you stand to gain by a life of grace. Some people’s lives are extremely difficult. I imagine in the history of the world, since human beings began to populate the world, most people have been miserable. Most of the world is hungry. Most of the world doesn’t have the luxuries that we enjoy and take for granted in this little period of history.
Patti Brunner: We have so much, yet the Lord asks us to look beyond the wealth of today. He asks us to look at forever.
Monsignor, would you give us your blessing?
Msgr. David LeSieur: [blessing]
Patti Brunner: Amen! Thank you Monsignor. To get a copy of the references in today’s show or to read the Liturgical readings please check the website patriarchMinistries.com and to listen to this show or previous broadcasts click paduamedia.com [spell Padua media .com] and Living Seasons of Change.
[i] Matthew 25:41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink.”
[ii] Galatians 6: 7 Make no mistake: God is not mocked, for a person will reap only what he sows, 8 because the one who sows for his flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows for the spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit. 9 Let us not grow tired of doing good, for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we do not give up.
[iii] Luke 13: 6 * And he told them this parable: “There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, 7 he said to the gardener, ‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. (So) cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?’ 8 He said to him in reply, ‘Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; 9 it may bear fruit in the future. If not you can cut it down.'”
[iv] 1 John 3: 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
[v] Romans 5:5-11 “He proves His love, that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”
[vi] www.3daysofdarkness.com [captured on Sep 8, 2009] “The most spectacular aspect of the Act of God will be the three days of darkness over the whole earth. The Three Days have been announced by many mystics, viz., Bl. Anna-Maria Taigi, Padre Pio, Elizabeth Canori-Mora, Rosa-Colomba Asdente, Palma d’Oria, in Italy; Father Nectou, in Belgium; St. Hildegard, in Germany; Pere Lamy, Marie Baourdi, Marie Martel, Marie-Julie Jahenny, in France. (This list is not exhaustive; many more mystics have announced the Three Days.)”
[vii] Exodus 10: 22 So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and there was dense darkness throughout the land of Egypt for three days. 23 Men could not see one another, nor could they move from where they were, for three days. But all the Israelites had light where they dwelt.
[viii] John 5: 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself, 27 and has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man.
[ix] “The Feast of Christ the King was established by Pope Pius XI in 1925 as an antidote to secularism, a way of life which leaves God out of man’s thinking and living and organizes his life as if God did not exist. The feast is intended to proclaim in a striking and effective manner Christ’s royalty over individuals, families, society, governments, and nations.” Per http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm?id=388 [captured on 8-15-2009]
Other References for Season of Forever
New American Bible (NAB) readings are referenced from the Lectionary for Mass, for use in the dioceses of the United States of America, second typical edition ©1997, 1970 by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. [see link]Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright ©1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and are used by permission. All rights reserved.
Readings for Season of Forever See link for full reading
31st Sunday
Deuteronomy 8:2-6 Keep the Lord’s commandments & statutes to have a long life. Love God with all heart, soul, and strength.
Hebrews 7:23-28 Jesus’ priesthood lasts forever, always able to save those who approach God through him. Jesus is perfect forever
Mark 12:28b-34 Love God with all heart, soul, mind, strength; love neighbor as yourself. It’s worth more than burnt offerings & sacrifices. You are not far from the kingdom of God.
All Saints Day (instead of 31st Sunday in 2009)
Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14 vision of a great multitude…every nation , race, people, and tongue/survived the time of great distress/robes washed white in the Blood of the Lamb
1 John 3:1-3 “we are God’s children now” “What we shall be has not been revealed.”
Matthew 5:1-12a Beatitudes –What do you want? Kingdom? Comfort? Land? Satisfaction? The clean of heart will SEE GOD!
All Souls Day/Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed
Wisdom 3:1-9 passing away thought an affliction–but they are in peace. As gold in furnace, he proved them; as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself
Romans 5:5-11 Love of God poured into our hearts through Holy Spirit; God proves love: while we still sinners Christ died for us; we are justified by his blood
Romans 6:3-9 Baptized into Christ’s death; united in his resurrection; old self crucified with him, death no long has power over Christ
John 6:37-40 Jesus will not reject anyone who comes to him; it’s the Father’s will not to lose anyone but everyone who sees the Son and believes in him will have eternal life
32nd Sunday Ordinary
1 Kings 17:10-16 1 Kings 17:10-16 Elijah and the generous destitute widow: miracle of provision until the drought ended.
Hebrews 9:24-28 Explanation of the annual blood sacrifice of the high priest; Christ offered once will appear a second time no to take away sin but to bring salvation to those who wait.
Mark 12:38-44 Beware of the Scribes who desire honor but devour the houses of widows. Story of the poor widow putting in her two coins (she understands now vs. eternity)
33rd Sunday Ordinary
Daniel 12:1-3 It will be a time unsurpassed in distress, Prince Michael your guardian, those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake: some shall live forever, others everlasting horror; those who lead the many to justice shall be like stars forever.
Hebrews 10:11-14, 18 One sacrifice for sins; the consecrated made perfect forever. Now he waits until his enemies are his footstool
Mark 13:24-32 Tribulation; sun, moon darkened, stars falling, then see Son of man coming; angels sent to gather the elect; watch for signs, no one but the Father knows the day or hour.
Our Lord Jesus Christ the King
Daniel 7:13-14 “I saw on like the Son of man coming”, presented to the Ancient One, received everlasting dominion, glory & kingship
Revelation 1:5-8 Jesus freed us from sin by his blood…made us into a kingdom, priests for his God & Father; Alpha & Omega “the one who is, who was, and who is to come”
John 18:33b-37 “Are you King?” “My kingdom does not belong to this world.” “For this I was born…to testify to truth” “everyone who belongs to truth listens to my voice”
