As we come to the end of the liturgical year, the Church draws our attention to the end of time. The readings are full of apocalyptic imagery and dire warnings of the coming judgment. Furthermore, we devote the month of November to praying for the dead, reminding us that the end of our own time might be coming even before the stars begin falling out of the sky.
But Jesus doesn’t only have warnings for us; he also has advice. It might not be the advice we expect, though. He doesn’t have some secret plan for where to hide when the four horsemen show up, or a one-shot recipe for surviving simultaneous earthquake, famine, and plague. Instead, he advises us, “by your perseverance you will secure your lives” (Lk 21:19).
Persevere. Hang on. Keep going. If we’ve gotten used to persevering in this life, then we can just keep right on persevering through the gates of death and into the eternal banquet of heaven. Every small cross that we take up in our daily lives, every little struggle that we fight our way through, helps us to gain the strength to defeat the final challenge, whether that be our own death or the actual end of the world.
But this still doesn’t seem quite right. Persevering in patience as you drive through the morning gridlock doesn’t really seem equivalent to peacefully walking to the nearest confessional after your neighbors just collapsed into ashes.
The reality is that our own strength can never suffice to safely pass the threshold of death. Jesus does expect us to use the challenges of life to grow in virtue, but he does not expect this virtue to take us all the way to the end. It can’t.
But he can. Our attempts to persevere in this life are not so we can marvel at our own abilities. Instead, in our life of perseverance we model Christ himself. He persevered through thirty years of manual labor in the middle of nowhere. He persevered through disciples who didn’t listen, and didn’t understand even when they did pay attention. And most of all, he persevered for our salvation on Mount Calvary.
As we ourselves persevere, we come to live more like Christ lived, we come to be more like Christ, and so we come to know Christ all the more. And as we come to know the Lord better, we will suddenly recognize that he has been by our side all along. He knows the crosses of this life, and he carries them along with us—our strength does not suffice, but his does. And he has promised to walk with us all the way through the end. For him, death is familiar territory, a battle already won. With the King of Life at our side, we have nothing to fear.
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Image: Anonymous, Cloisters Apocalypse
