NO TIME TO WASTE
33^rd Sunday Ordinary Time, Cycle C

1 Reading: Malachi 3:19-20a
Psalm: The Lord comes to rule the earth with justice.
2 Reading: 2 Thessalonians 3:7-12
Gospel: Luke 21:5-19

“It’s not the end of the world.” We use that phrase in many ways. Sometimes it’s meant to comfort—to reassure someone that what they’ve done isn’t as bad as it seems. But sometimes it’s used carelessly, even cruelly—especially when spoken to someone who has lost a loved one. Because for anyone who has faced such loss, the world has ended in a profound sense. When love dies—whether through separation or death—a whole universe collapses.

Human beings live in a physical world, and that world goes on, indifferent, when tragedy strikes. The sun still rises, clocks still tick, the seasons still turn. And yet, that can feel like a scandal, almost an insult, because for us something final has happened. As W. H. Auden laments in his poem Stop All the Clocks, when his beloved dies, time itself should stop. Everything should cease. It is the end of the world.

What this reveals is that our true world is not built of stones, stars, and seasons, but of people—those we love, those who give our lives shape and meaning. They are our world. And if we love God, that love—His for us, ours for Him—can reshape and transform our world beyond measure.

Yet human love is perilous. To love is to become vulnerable, to hand over our heart knowing it can be broken. “Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” we tell ourselves—but in the moment of loss, it can feel like the opposite is true. Better not to love, we think. Better to build walls than to open ourselves to that kind of pain.

Part of the difficulty is our confusion about love itself. We use the same word for the rush of passion and for the quiet, daily work of devotion—the steadfast choice to will another’s good. Bertrand Russell once wrote that, stopped at a traffic light, he suddenly realized he no longer loved his wife. But love is not a fleeting feeling that can vanish at a red light. True love, as Shakespeare reminds us, “alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.”

And that is what Jesus is speaking about in today’s Gospel. At this time of year, the readings can sound ominous—they speak of the end of the world, of wars and earthquakes, of trials before kings. Yet Jesus’ constant refrain is this: Do not be afraid. “Not a hair on your head will be destroyed.”

How can we not be afraid, when He speaks of the end of all things? The answer is love. For those who live in God’s love, whose hearts rest secure in His unchanging care, the world will never truly end. Even when we falter, even when we betray or wound the ones who love us most, God’s love endures. If we return to Him, that love—steady, eternal, and sure—remakes our world again. And then, whatever happens, it will never really be the end of the world.