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Tuesday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
2 Thessalonians 2:1–3a, 14–17
The Christians in Thessalonica had a problem.
They were waiting for the coming of the Lord.
But their waiting became restless.
Some became confused.
Some became frightened.
Some thought the Day of the Lord had already come.
So Paul writes to them with pastoral firmness:
do not be quickly shaken.
do not be alarmed.
This matters.
Because from the beginning, Christians have believed that Jesus will come again.
Jesus Himself spoke about the coming of the Son of Man.
At the Ascension, the disciples were told that the same Jesus who was taken into heaven would come again.
Paul had preached this to the Thessalonians.
But faith in Christ’s coming can easily become an unhealthy obsession.
People begin to speculate.
They search for signs.
They become frightened by wars,
disasters,
earthquakes,
disease,
economic crises,
and changes in the climate.
They ask:
Is this the end?
Is the Day of the Lord here?
In the Bible, the Day of the Lord is a serious expression.
The prophets speak of it as a day of judgment.
A day when evil is exposed.
A day when the proud are brought low.
A day when the righteous are delivered.
In apocalyptic language, it can sound terrifying:
sun darkened,
moon changed,
stars falling,
heavens shaken.
But this language must be read carefully.
It is not meant to feed curiosity.
It is not given so that we can calculate dates.
It is not a puzzle for religious fear.
No one knows the day or the hour.
And those who pretend to know have always been wrong.
There is also another danger.
When we see ecological destruction,
nuclear weapons,
wars,
hatred,
and injustice,
we may call it the Day of the Lord.
But often, what we are seeing is not the Day of the Lord.
It is the day of Adam.
It is the result of human sin,
human violence,
human greed,
and human pride.
The Gospel does not call us to panic.
It calls us to conversion.
The New Testament does not teach us to stare anxiously at the end of the world.
It teaches us to live faithfully until the Lord comes.
And every Sunday, the Church gives us the true center:
the Lord’s Day.
Not a day of fear,
but a day of victory.
The day of Christ’s resurrection.
The day when sin and death are already defeated.
The day when we meet the risen Lord in the Eucharist.
So instead of speculating about the end,
we begin again from the altar.
We receive Christ.
We remember His victory.
Then we carry its fruits from Sunday into Monday,
Tuesday,
Wednesday,
and every ordinary day.
In our families.
In our work.
In our neighborhoods.
In a frightened world, Christians should not spread fear.
We should spread hope.
The Lord will come.
But today, He sends us to live as children of the resurrection.
Biblical Reflections on the Gospel of Matthew
Scripture Attribution
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition,
copyright © 1989, 1993
the Division of Christian Education of the National Council
of the Churches of
Christ in the United States of America.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Content License
© 2025 Krakus.
Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
(Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial).