Ash Wednesday, Dustification and the End of the World
The End of the World and our True Destiny
PROFESSOR ANTON MEEMANA
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Lack of faith in a transcendent God leads to possessive knowledge. Wisdom cannot be possessed but only received gratuitously. To possess something is to lose it. The libidinal desire to own, to possess, to take hold of something is to give up the way of wisdom, the way of endless openness. True wisdom is a vision, an ever-growing and widening vision, not a private possession.
Speculation about the end of the world is a betrayal of Christian message. Such a preoccupation is the slipping away of the day-to-day historical living. Our business is to live each day joyfully and faithfully without apocalyptic anxiety. Unnecessary anxiety is anti-Christian. By living fully we prepare ourselves for any apocalyptic eventuality.
Even if God decides to end the universe today, those who have attained eternal life will remain in that state forever. Nothing will be taken from them; nothing will be lost to them. Even after the end of the world, the eternal life continues.
Whatever graces they may have been granted will never be lost to them. Eternal life is a permanent reality and nothing can jeopardize or jettison it, not even the end of the world.
The end of the world is not the end of God’s love, creativity, compassion and mercy. The end of the world would be an act of his unrestricted, unconditional, unreserved love. Both the beginning as well as the end of the universe is a work of Divine love. God is never malicious, merciless, ruthless, heartless, cruel or mischievous.
The end of the world is insignificant in comparison to the love of God. Absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God. Not even the end of the universe can separate us from it. The universe has a beginning as well as an end. But its end is not like any other end we know of.
The shape of the future to come cannot be known exactly. This massive lust, gnostic libido, cognitive concupiscence for certitude is symptomatic of false prophets and futurists. Wise person lives by faith in a God whose presence is ever active in history.
Futurism is false knowledge. Wisdom comes from doubt, anxiety, questioning, “the waiting, the periods of aridity and dullness, guilt and despondency, contrition and repentance, forsakenness and hope against hope, the silent stirrings of love and grace.” (Eric Voegelin)
Ash Wednesday reminds us that the way to heaven is a dusty and a sweaty path.
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