We’re into the Advent season, and you may have noticed that the Mass readings are tending toward the apocalyptic. By that, I mean the readings tend to deal with the “end of time.” This emphasis is appropriate, of course, since Advent is not merely about Christ’s first coming in the Nativity, but also – and more so – a reminder that He will “come again” (as we affirm repeatedly in the Creed) at the end of time “to judge the living and the dead.”
At some point during this Advent season, there will undoubtedly be a priest somewhere with a smattering of biblical-critical trivia he picked up in seminary who will confidently inform his congregation that Paul changed his mind on the coming of Christ. Early on in his ministry, he’ll say, Paul believed Christ would return soon, during Paul’s own lifetime, as is suggested, for example (or so it seems to some), in passages such as 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 (“we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord”) and 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 (“We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet”).
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