The coming wrath

There have been dire warnings about what will take place if this or that happens in next week’s election.

There have also been many dire warnings about what will take place if the current financial and economic crisis continues to get worse.

None of the things foretold by any of these dire warnings, however, can compare to what Saint Paul foretells in the last words of today’s second reading (1 Thessalonians 1:5c-10):

The coming wrath.

This wrath is not God having a temper tantrum: it is simply and purely the accumulation of the evil that you, I, and the rest of humanity have committed over the millennia and that must inevitably rebound back to us.

What goes around comes around and we cannot slide away forever.

Against such an overwhelming accumulation of wrath we can be saved only the infinite merits of the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Today’s other readings remind us that there are indeed good things we can and must do - love God and love our neighbor (Matthew 22:34-40) as well as be just and compassionate to the poor, to immigrants, and to widows and orphans (Exodus 22:20-26) – but as we do these good things we must do, we must always remain close and faithful to Christ who alone can deliver us from the coming wrath that we ourselves have stored up.