Tag Archives: Harold Camping

The World to Come

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There was an evangelist on TV a couple of years ago, Harold Camping, who was predicting the end the world. He calculated from the Bible that the world was going to end on May 21, 2011 at 6 PM. It was going to be an awful, terrifying event–fires, earthquakes; everything was going to be blown up and destroyed.

Harold had no use for any the churches. They were taken over by the devil, he said. Read the bible, hold on to it; it was the only thing that would save you, he said.

I remember signs on the buses and on billboards announcing judgment day. It was surprising how many people were paying attention to him. Harold not only had the date wrong; he also had God’s plan for our world wrong.

Paul’s Letter to the Romans, which we’re reading at Mass today, sees such a different picture. (Romans 8, 18-25) Paul speaks of a glory that will be revealed. The resurrection of Jesus has changed the way we look at our death and also the way we see the future of creation itself.

The destiny of the created world is linked to our destiny. It wont be destroyed. “Creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God.” It “groans in labor pains” until that day comes, when there will be a “new heaven and a new earth.”

Just as we hope to share in the resurrection of Jesus, we also hope that creation share in it. We ready ourselves now for the future we’ve been promised by a life of loving and caring, a love and care that should extend to the created world. Loving and caring for creation is so urgently needed today, when it suffers from so much human abuse.

“I look forward to the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.” Those words of the creed are so important. I look forward, not in fear but in hope. I look forward to sharing in the glory of the resurrection of Jesus. I look forward to a world to come, when the creation we know now shares in the glory we know then.

Resurrection Thinking

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I spoke today, the final day of  our mission at Immaculate Conception Church, Melbourne Beach, Florida, about the mystery of the Resurrection of Jesus, a crucial mystery of our faith. Each of the gospels presents it in its own way. Here’s a summary from a previous blog of mine.

A recent presentation on the Resurrection by Bishop Wright, the Anglican bishop of Durham, to the Catholic bishops of Italy, is particularly interesting. I put it on my blog last month.

I began my presentation talking about Harold Camping’s prediction from last spring that the world was going to end on May 21, 2011. It didn’t, of course. But Harold’s thinking probably reflects the widespread gloom in our western world, in particular, about where the world is heading.

Our belief in the Risen Christ affects the way we see our church, ourselves and our world. We learn from this mystery to trust in the Risen Christ who King of all creation, our Way, our Truth and our Life. We need Resurrection Thinking.

Here’s a visual meditation on the Passion of Jesus from Rembrandt:

The Glory of God

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I was surprised to see Harold Camping at his usual place on television the other night. The rapture didn’t happen May 21st, he explained, because God wanted to alert the world that the end was going to come this October. A caller wondered if we could do anything about helping this world of ours, but Harold was quite firm that God was going to destroy it completely. It’s an open sewer, according to him. Nothing’s worth saving.

How different from the Christian vision of St. Irenaeus, the 3rd century  bishop of Lyons, whose feast we celebrate June 28th. He condemned the gnostics– favorites of new age thinkers today– for their dismissal of creation as evil. The One God is the source of our created world and we know him through it, Irenaeus taught. We cannot know God if we depreciate or ignore the world God has made; it mirrors his glory.

“The glory of God gives life; those who see God receive life. For this reason God, who cannot be grasped, comprehended or seen, allows himself to be seen, comprehended and grasped by us, that he may give life to those who see and receive him…  God is the source of all activity throughout creation. He cannot be seen or described in his own nature and in all his greatness by any of his creatures. Yet he is certainly not unknown.”

The Word of God has a twofold role, according to Irenaeus, revealing God in creation and finally coming in the flesh to complete this revelation in Jesus Christ.  No  one has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father; he has revealed him.

“He revealed God to us and presented us to God. He safeguarded the invisibility of the Father to prevent us from treating God with contempt and to set before us a constant goal toward which to make progress. On the other hand, he revealed God to us and made him visible in many ways to prevent us from being totally separated from God and so cease to be.

“Life in us is the glory of God; in human life one can see the vision of God. If the revelation of God through creation gives life to all who live upon the earth, much more does the manifestation of the Father through the Word give life to those who see God.”

Harold should read that wonderful story from the Book of Genesis we read yesterday at Mass about Abraham bargaining with God for the salvation of Sodom and Gomorrah. The world’s worth saving.

There’s Gonna Be a Great Day

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6th Sunday of Easter

Last weekend in the New York area we were waiting for the end of the world. That’s what the signs in the buses and on billboards predicted. It was a message from Harold Camping, president of Family Radio, who calculated from clues he deciphered in the Bible that  May 21st was the day of judgment and later in October the world would finally come to an end.

Of course, it didn’t happen.

I must confess to being a long time viewer of Harold on his television program Open Forum, which comes on after the Evening News. Monday after the fateful day, I watched him respond to reporters asking for an explanation. The poor reporters didn’t have a chance. Harold has been dealing with questioners like them for years. They didn’t rattle him at all.

A spiritual earthquake occurred, Harold said. He hasn’t given up. The world’s going to end in October, just as he said.  He’s sure of it. I’m not.

I think my interest in Harold comes from his interest in the future when, according to traditional Christian belief,  Jesus “will come to judge the living and the dead.”

For Harold the last judgment is going to be like a scene from The Terminator and other grim science fiction movies that hold the popular imagination today.  The last days are dark days when God gets even with the human race for its sinfulness and unbelief. The world falls apart in scenes of horrible cosmic death and destruction. Not many will be saved.

We are living in tough times and some people think our world isn’t going to make it. That’s why they listen to people like Harold.

What we need to do is listen to the Easter message of Jesus. It’s so different. Listen to him speaking in the gospel today to his disciples who fear they will be abandoned and  wonder about their future. Their world was shaken too.

“I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.”  “He will lead us to God,” St. Peter says. ( I Peter 3,18)  He gives us the Spirit of truth who will guide us from within. Jesus Christ is our Savior, a saving God.

Our first reading today describes a church experiencing a mysterious, unpredictable growth. From Jerusalem the gospel takes root in neighboring Samaria, an unlikely place to welcome it. From there it reaches to the ends of the Roman world. We believe that the mystery of the Resurrection of Jesus set in motion a great surge of grace.  God reaches out to creation, not to destroy it, but to bring it the blessing of life.

When we say Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead,  we’re not predicting death and rejection. God blesses all time with love. We don’t have to worry about the day or the hour for this to happen. God offers us signs that he is still with us and will stay with us all days. The Eucharist is one of them.

God is with us “now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”

An Upward Movement

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Well, the world didn’t end yesterday. But a lot of  Catholics went to confesssion, just in case, I hear. The media is searching for Harold Camping but haven’t found him yet.

Instead of Harold’s gloomy, scary message, Jesus promises in the scriptures read at Mass today that he is the way, the truth and the life and that he has a home for us beyond this one. Good news for all.

In today’s Office of Readings there’s a wonderful sermon of St. Maximus of Turin proclaiming that all creation rises through the Resurrection of Jesus; “each element raising itself to something higher.” An antidote to the individualistic interpretation of the mystery of the redemption we hear so often.

“Christ is risen! He has burst open the gates of hell and let the dead go free; he has renewed the earth through the members of his Church now born again in baptism, and has made it blossom afresh with people brought back to life. His Holy Spirit has unlocked the doors of heaven, which stand wide open to receive those who rise up from the earth. Because of Christ’s resurrection the thief ascends to paradise, the bodies of the blessed enter the holy city, and the dead are restored to the company of the living. There is an upward movement in the whole of creation, each element raising itself to something higher. We see hell restoring its victims to the upper regions, earth sending its buried dead to heaven, and heaven presenting the new arrivals to the Lord. In one and the same movement, our Saviour’s passion raises human beings from the depths, lifts them up from the earth, and sets them in the heights.”

That’s a message poor Harold didn’t understand.

Harold Camping’s Judgment Day

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Harold Camping is predicting judgment day today around 6 PM. Signs are up in the buses and on billboards in our area.

I watch his program every once in awhile because he’s an unlikely prophet. He’s an old man with a face like shoe leather and a gravely slow voice who always thanks those who call in to his program “for sharing.” But really there’s not much sharing. It’s mostly Harold shuffling through the bible he has on his lap and droning out his commentaries on bible verses. His big news is the end of the world coming today.

He’s dead against the Christian churches of any denomination. Satan’s got into the churches, he says. He’s arrived at today’s judgment day by an absurd set of calculations. But unfortunately he’s got an big audience out there who have lost confidence in institutions like churches and governments and are afraid.

Harold preys on their fears. He announces a God who only will save a few. Get ready, Harold says. He’s coming today in earthquakes. And while you’re getting ready, send some money in to Family Radio so that they can announce the news to the world.

It would be laughable, if you did not listen to the callers on Harold’s show. Last night a couple were asking about their three year old baby. “Will our baby be saved?” Their baby can’t speak yet for herself and can’t pray so they have her close by as they read their bible and pray fearfully for salvation. But how can they help their baby be saved?

“Let not your hearts be troubled,” Jesus said in our readings at Mass yesterday. “In my  Father’s house there are many mansions.”

Harold’s God isn’t mine.

The Last Days

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When Jesus came up to Jerusalem before his death, he was not a hapless Galillean peasant who would be cut down by a powerful Jewish-Roman elite. He was not simply a healer who was killed because he stirred up crowds and might also stir up revolution in the sensitive land of his day.

Those who believed in him saw him as a great teacher, a  “Rabbi” well aware of his times and his tradition. Matthew’s gospel emphasizes his role as teacher. But he was more than that, as Peter testifies in the 9th chapter of Matthew. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

In the chapters of the synoptic gospels  preceding his passion, Jesus Christ speaks about the world and its future, the “end times.”  In his new book,” Jesus of Nazareth, Part 2,” Pope Benedict calls this part of the gospel the most difficult part to explain.

Jesus sees the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and what follows it. That’s important as he goes to his death.

He sees himself as the new temple. In a new age, when the gentiles are called to believe in him, the old temple will be abandoned. Its sacrifices for sins now take place through the blood of the Lamb. His blood is shed for us and we are united to God through him.

So much of what Jesus does at the Last Supper begins that replacement of the temple and its sacrifices.

The temple and everything about it was dear to him. That’s obvious from what he says about it and his devotion to its worship. Like a mother hen he would have sheltered the Holy City under his wings, but it turned away, as it turned away from Jeremiah and the other prophets.

There are signs up on the buses from Union City to New York City that Judgment Day is  coming on May 21st. That’s the word from Harold Camping on Family Radio, who has it all figured out.

The pope’s summary of the end times in his book is so much more nuanced than that of the biblical  fundamentalists. He keeps the future mysterious, and repeats Jesus’ message to “stay awake” each day.

 

St. Joseph

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For awhile, I’ve been studying a television preacher on one of the cable stations we get– Doctor Harold Camping, who is predicting the end of the world on May 21, 2011.  He’s found this news in the Bible, he says, and tries to prove it through fast and far-fetched calculations. He’s against churches and their services and their sacraments, like baptism. The age of the churches is over, according to him, just believe in the bible, it’s all there.

Questioners call in and he ends the session thanking them for sharing, but there’s not much sharing going on. It’s Dr. Camping’s monologue.

He’s not interested in recent biblical scholarship either. His main point is to get ready for May 21th by living a good life, otherwise you’re going to be burned to a crisp.

Today’s the feast of St. Joseph and I’m sure Dr. Camping isn’t interested in saints either. In fact, when he talks about the bible, he pays little attention at all to the people in it. The bible is just for us, waiting for the world to end.

But a world of witnesses produced this book, and Joseph was among them. He’s a guide, not only to the bible but the faith it represents. He’s a “son of David,” whom God calls from the small village of Nazareth to play an intimate part in the birth and life of Jesus.

In fact, in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth, Joseph is more prominent than Mary. He provides Jesus with a genealogy going back to Abraham. He is told by the angel not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife; he shouldn’t divorce her as Jewish law called for, and he should name the child, Jesus, “for he will save his people from their sins.”

After the visit of the Magi, he’s told to take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt. Then, the angel tells Joseph to return to Israel after Herod’s death. Finally, he makes his home in Nazareth in Galilee, where his family would be safer away from Herod’s heir, Archelaus, who ruled in Judea.

Clearly, according to Matthew’s gospel, Joseph has a major role in the birth and early life of Jesus Christ. Is that role over?
“Whenever the divine favor chooses someone to receive a special grace, or to accept a lofty vocation, God adorns the person chosen with all the gifts of the Spirit needed to fulfill the task at hand,” says St. Bernardine of Siena in the readings for today’s feast.

“This general rule is especially verified in the case of Saint Joseph, the foster-father of our Lord and the husband of the Queen of our world, enthroned above the angels. He was chosen by the eternal Father as the trustworthy guardian and protector of his greatest treasures, namely, his divine Son and Mary, Joseph’s wife. He carried out this vocation with complete fidelity until at last God called him, saying: ‘Good and faithful servant enter into the joy of your Lord.’”

St. Bernardine goes on to say that the church today honors Joseph as the fulfillment of the “ noble line of patriarchs and prophets” of the Old Testament. Christ honors him in heaven as he did on earth.

“Remember us, Saint Joseph, and plead for us to your foster-child. Ask your most holy bride, the Virgin Mary, to look kindly upon us, since she is the mother of him who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns eternally.”

Joseph was blessed with a wonderful interior faith. I don’t think he was too interested in calculating the end of the world.