The Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

Scripture Readings
First Daniel 12:1-3
Second Hebrews 10:11-14, 18
Gospel Mark 13:24-32

Prepared by: Fr. James Cuddy, O.P.

1. Subject Matter
• The Sunday begins the push towards the end of the year. While we’re still a week away from
Christ the King, the readings take up the themes of the end times, the resurrection from the
dead, and the vigilance required for believers to enter into the rest prepared for them from all
eternity.

2. Exegetical Notes
• First Reading: The apocalyptic vision of the prophet Daniel is regarded as the earliest
enunciation of the belief in the resurrection of the dead, and the first biblical occurrence of the
phrase “life everlasting” (cf. JBC).
• Second Reading: Contrasts are drawn in this lesson between the Levitical priesthood and
Christ’s own priesthood, namely the difference between the daily offering for sins and the
one, perfect offering of Christ.
• “The contrasting postures of the standing Jewish priests and the seated Christ have
frequently been invoked against the view that the sacrifice of Jesus perdures in heaven. But
one must recognize that the different images used in Hebrews to depict the functions of
Christ overlap. Jesus’ being seated here refers to his enthronement. His being seated as king
is contrasted to the standing position of the OT priests in their constantly repeated sacrificial
work” (JBC).
• Gospel: This passage – the last from our tour of Mark’s Gospel in Year B, and the last
reading before Christ the King and Advent – leaves the Marcan audience on the eve of the
Last Supper. Like Daniel in the first reading, we have another apocalyptic description of the
eschatological coming of the Son of Man.
• Nowhere in the OT do these cosmic signs precede the coming of the Son of Man. The list of
portents is a way of saying that all creation will signal his coming (cf. JBC).
• Amen I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.
“A generation is forty years. This was said in A.D. 30 and forty years later, in A.D. 70, the
Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. The Temple was a miniature of the Jewish concept of
the construction of the world. Their world was destroyed” (SCB website, see below).

3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church

• 999 How do the dead rise? Christ is raised with his own body: “See my hands and my feet,
that it is I myself”; but he did not return to an earthly life. So, in him, “all of them will rise again
with their own bodies which they now bear,” but Christ “will change our lowly body to be like
his glorious body,” into a “spiritual body.”
• 1544 Everything that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its fulfillment in
Christ Jesus, the “one mediator between God and men.” . . . By a single offering he has
perfected for all time those who are sanctified, that is, by the unique sacrifice of the cross.
• 1545 The redemptive sacrifice of Christ is unique, accomplished once for all; yet it is made
present in the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Church. The same is true of the one priesthood of
Christ; it is made present through the ministerial priesthood without diminishing the
uniqueness of Christ's priesthood: “Only Christ is the true priest, the others being only his
ministers.”
• 2612 In Jesus “the Kingdom of God is at hand.” He calls his hearers to conversion and faith,
but also to watchfulness. In prayer the disciple keeps watch, attentive to Him Who Is and Him
Who Comes, in memory of his first coming in the lowliness of the flesh, and in the hope of his
second coming in glory. In communion with their Master, the disciples’ prayer is a battle; only
by keeping watch in prayer can one avoid falling into temptation.
• 865 It is in [the Church] that the Kingdom of heaven, the Reign of God, already exists and will
be fulfilled at the end of time. The kingdom has come in the person of Christ and grows
mysteriously in the hearts of those incorporated into him, until its full eschatological
manifestation.
• 2849 It is by his prayer that Jesus vanquishes the tempter, both at the outset of his public
mission and in the ultimate struggle of his agony. Christ . . . urges us to vigilance of the heart
in communion with his own. Vigilance is custody of the heart . . . The Holy Spirit constantly
seeks to awaken us to keep watch. Finally, this petition takes on all its dramatic meaning in
relation to the last temptation of our earthly battle; it asks for final perseverance. “Lo, I am
coming like a thief! Blessed is he who is awake.”

4. Patristic Commentary and Other Authorities

• St. Victoriunus of Pettau: “We must not inordinately fix upon the chronology of what is said
in Scripture, because frequently the Holy Spirit, having spoken of the end of the last times,
then returns again to address a previous time, and fills up what had before been left unsaid.
Nor must we look for a specific chronology in apocalyptic visions, but rather follow the
meaning of those things which are prophesied.”
• St. Augustine: “He did not only foretell to His disciples the good things which He would give
to His saints and faithful ones, but also the woes in which this world was to abound, that we
 might look for our reward at the end of the world with more confidence, from feeling the woes
in like manner announced as about to precede the end of the world.”
• St. Gregory Palamas: “As for us, who in this present age are God’s chosen people, a
priestly race, the Church of the living God separated from all the impious and ungodly, may
we be found separated from the darnel in the age to come as well, and united to those who
are saved in Christ our Lord, who is blessed forever. Amen.”
• Venerable Bede: “The heaven which shall pass away is not the ethereal or starry heaven,
but the heaven where is the air. For wherever the water of the judgment could reach, there
also, according to the words of the blessed Peter, the fire of judgment shall reach. But the
heaven and the earth shall pass away in that form which they now have, but in their essence
they shall last without end.”

5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars

• After the publication of Come Be My Light (1997), the world came to know Blessed Teresa of
Calcutta as a great saint of vigilance. During her years of spiritual aridity and darkness, she
wrote to a priest: Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the
emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear. And yet she
persevered and remained focused for the day when the dawn from on high broke upon her
and revealed himself to her.

6. Quotations from Pope Benedict XVI

• “It is not simply – as one might expect – God, the infinite, the unknown, the eternal, who
judges. On the contrary, he has handed the judgment over to one who, as man, is our
brother. It is not a stranger who judges us but he whom we know in faith. The judge will not
advance to meet us as the other, but as one of us, who knows human existence from inside
and has suffered. Thus over the judgment glows the dawn of hope; it is not only the day of
wrath but also the second coming of our Lord.”
• “The Creed’s article about the judgment transfers this very idea to our meeting with the judge
of the world. On that day of fear the Christian will be allowed to see in happy wonder that he
‘to whom all power in heaven and on earth’ was the companion in faith of his days on earth,
and it is as if through the words of the Creed Jesus were already laying his hands on him and
saying: Be without fear, it is I.”

7. Other Considerations
• While the Gospel presents the fearful reality of the passing away of the world, this
apocalyptic anxiety can be tempered by the truth proclaimed in the Introit: The Lord says,
“My plans for you are peace and not disaster; when you call to me, I will listen to you, and I
will bring you back to the place from which I exiled you.” This confidence in the Lord’s love for
us makes it possible for believers to profess in full voice “we look for the resurrection of the
dead and the life of the world to come.” It makes us long for the coming of the Kingdom, as
terrifying as the physical signs might be.
• This fear in the face of the world passing away can also be relieved by the recognition of
what Christ has done for all mankind. This priest offered one sacrifice for sins. Where there is
forgiveness of these, there is no longer offering for sin. Christ’s self-oblation gives us hope
that the trials of the present age and the ones that will accompany Christ’s return are as
nothing compared with the glory that is to be revealed and entered into by those who are the
Lord’s friends.
• The liturgy frequently points out the need for vigilance. Since no one knows the day or the
hour, we pray: “Father of all that is good, keep us faithful in serving you, for to serve you is
our lasting joy” (Opening Prayer).

Recommended Resources
Jerome Biblical Commentary
Cameron, Peter John. To Praise, To Bless, To Preach.
Pope Benedict XVI, Benedictus: Day by Day with Pope Benedict XVI.
See also the ever-helpful website of St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Picayune, MI. One will find
there a user-friendly electronic edition of the Catechism and a good weekly Bible study.
www.scborromeo.org