**Preparing for the big one**

**Preparing for the big one**

Rev. Jerry J. Pokorsky

A child of 8 is busy with many things. Like most of my friends, I loved assembling model airplanes and space rockets. We all knew not to eat the radioactive snow, and we were trained to look for those Civil Defense stickers in case of an emergency. The nation rightly feared the Russians back in those days. We were Cold Warriors.

October of my ninth year was the month of the Cuban Missile Crisis. As we watched Walter Cronkite on our black and white Zenith TV, I thought my many years of preparation – including “Duck and Cover” – would pay off. I would, at last, find out what a bomb shelter looked like. But my curiosity turned to fear. Never before or since have I seen as much turmoil in the face of my dad as I did in October of 1962.

By the weekend, we all lined up for Confession. The confessional lines at Saint Mary’s included not only the usual children but many adults. Decades later I would read that Catholic churches all across the country had seen confessional lines stretching out the door and around the block. There’s nothing like the prospect of a nuclear holocaust to focus a man’s attention on his eternal destiny. But the Cuban Missile Crisis soon fizzled, if you pardon the expression, and life returned to normal.

An internet search identifying catastrophic events throughout history reveals many near-apocalyptic events. Floods in China killed upwards to 4 million people in 1931. But germs are responsible for way more deaths than any weather and geological phenomena. Exactly 200 years ago the Spanish influenza wiped out between 50 and 100 million. (Maybe it’s time to stop all the handshaking at Mass.) Fear not. We have high technology on our side.

But Jesus disrupts our complacency. He describes how the world will come to an end before the Second Coming:

And there will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. (Luke 21:25-26)

Those inclined to worry about the end times might take note of a series of unusual seismic pulses that rippled around the world in recent months. Apparently, the ripples involved huge movements of magma beneath the earth’s crust, miles offshore and under thousands of feet of water, extending from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. Was the recent Alaska earthquake a consequence of the seismic event? We also might worry about the super volcano in Yellowstone National Park. If it erupts, life on earth ceases as we know it.

To press the point that the end is near, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the Church’s ultimate trial will be preceded by a great apostasy from the truth:

Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh. (CCC 675)

Such a great apostasy seems to be upon us and spreading around the globe. The faith in Europe is moribund. The Church in Ireland, once a great Catholic stronghold, is in complete disrepair. We have clergy at the highest levels of the Church effectively atheist in morality, succumbing to a culture of self-worship. And we all breathe the same cultural air.

Knowing with certainty that the world will someday come to an end, we've got to ask ourselves one question (to borrow a line from Clint Eastwood): “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do you? Are you aware of any mortal sins on your soul? Miss Mass without a sufficient excuse? Internet porn? Contraception? Enabling an abortion? Do you know that the Sacrament of Penance is the ordinary and reliable way to forgive sins? Have you forgotten how to go to Confession?

No worry, priests are trained to keep Confessions short and sweet, and boring. Unlike the drama of human generosity, sins are boring. Sins are relatively few in number but come in various sizes. There are only Ten Commandments, and all sins can be clustered in variations around those Ten. But even if a crime story is intensely interesting, the Church makes sure that the confession of sin in the Sacrament of Penance remains, well, boring.

Suppose a man robs a bank, repents, and goes to Confession. As a sound pastoral practice, the priest is forbidden from asking for too many details such as the name of the bank or the names of the co-conspirators. The priest may not legitimately ask the amount of money stolen provided the penitent promises to make full restitution. What is not boring, however, is the absolution. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, those priests might have been exhausted, but they must have felt a profound satisfaction as instruments of God, granting peace of soul to so many before the nuclear apocalypse.

Based on the apostasy we see around the world, maybe the end is near. Or maybe we’re not due for the final tribulation for many centuries. “…of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” (Mt. 24:36) In any case, let’s hope things will hold out until our next Confession, a Confession we should approach with a sober resolve.

“And then they will see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21:27-28)