THE OUTCOME HAS ALREADY BEEN DECIDED

 

The kingdom of God is like yeast a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened.

Matthew 13:31-35

 

One of my favorite prayers is the prayer that the priest says after the Lord's Prayer at every Mass.  In it we ask God for all we need to “be always free from sin and safe from all distress as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior.” We could not "await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior" unless we knew how things are going to turn out, unless we were already in on the great secret, unless we knew that the end will be wonderful., unless we have heard and believed this "good news."  

 

The message of this prayer is truly fundamental to our faith and that is the fact that "the kingdom will come," "good will triumph over evil" and "even the gates of hell will not prevail against it's coming." The Kingdom of God will come because God has seen to it.  Evil may win many more battles against good, but the outcome of this struggle is not up for grabs. The outcome has already been decided.  The victory over sin and death will not be a matter of dramatic explosion like a bomb but a quiet, slow infiltration until evil is finally overpowered and crowded out like yeast working in a mass of dough.

 

One of my favorite words in scripture contains the same message of "awaiting the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior" It is a word used by Paul in his II Letter to Timothy. It is a word under which most of my books are published - sophronismos. Sophronismos is sometimes translated as wisdom, but in actuality it is a very special kind of wisdom. It means the "knowing how to keep one's cool in the face of panic," "the ability to wait in joyful hope in the face of sin and death."  One cannot "await the blessed hope" or possess the ability to keep one's cool in the face of evil unless one knows how all this is going to end.  Otherwise, he would merely be a grinning idiot in the face of the world's many harsh realities.  

 

In spite of this fundamental fact about our faith that we can “await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior" even while we are up to our necks in alligators, some Catholics can be as negative, hopeless and demoralized about the future as any atheist. It's as if they have not heard that the kingdom will come - with or without our help.

 

When Jesus told us that his final gift to us is peace, this is what he was talking about, not a time of perfect peace, but the "great assurance" that the “yeast is indeed at work in the dough” as we speak and in God's time the “whole batch will be leavened.” Knowing that fact, we can have peace of mind and peace of heart even when things look dismal on the surface of things. When we know that for sure we can indeed be protected from "all distress" and "await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”