This Is the Last Hour

December 31, 2008

Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas

By Melanie Rigney

Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that the antichrist was coming, so now many antichrists have appeared. Thus we know this is the last hour. … I write to you not because you do not know the truth but because you do, and because every lie is alien to the truth. (1 John 18, 21)

Sing to the Lord, bless his name; announce his salvation day after day. (Psalms 96:2)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. …What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1, 4-5)

Piety

Lord, let this be the last hour in my present darkness. Hold my hand as I sing Your song and bless Your name. Open my eyes to Your Light.

Study

“Annunciation” by Denise Levertov

Well, here we are, at one of those people-created last hours. The six weeks before New Year’s Day can be a sort of reverse Lent: too much sugar, too much spending, too much liquor, and too much “busy”-ness that culminates tomorrow with resolutions to eat less, spend less, drink less, and spend more time in prayer and with family.

Opinion Research Corporation says 62 percent of Americans set New Year’s resolutions at least sometimes. Of those, 8 percent say they always achieve their goal; 68 percent are successful every other year or less, and the remaining 24 percent say they never are successful.

If the success rate is so low, why do so many of us keep making resolutions? Perhaps for the same reason we start each day with a pledge that our walk will be a little bit closer to Him, even though we know we will come up short in some way. We go on, to paraphrase today’s readings, not because we do not know the truth, but because we do, because we know the Light shines even in the darkness and will vanquish the darkness. It might not happen quickly enough or slowly enough to suit our mood of the moment, but it will happen. We need only say yes and wait.

We’ve just finished up Advent and the confidence of Mary’s yes and waiting. In a couple months, we’ll ponder anew Christ’s yes and waiting. In this time in between Advent and Lent, in between 2008 and 2009, and smack in the middle of the Twelve Days of Christmas, we might consider some of our own responses to the Lord. The following is from “Annunciation” by Denise Levertov, the activist poet who converted to Catholicism in the decade before her death in 1997:

Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?
Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.
More often
those moments
when roads of light and storm
open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from

in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

I’d like to believe that the gates do not close and the pathway does not vanish, that there is always another opportunity to say yes. But perhaps it is wiser to approach each of God’s requests as if we are at John’s last hour because, in some way, each hour is a last hour, never to be relived. Let us resolve, knowing we will not always succeed, to say yes to the light—and to an extraordinary journey in the hours that remain.

Action

Consider making The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis your user’s manual for 2009. This five-hundred-year-old standard is alive online or at most bookstores. By turns wise, challenging, amusing, aggravating, simplistic, and deep, this little guide can inspire action for a day or a lifetime.