Advent readings have a double goal: to prepare us for both the coming of Christ at Christmas, and his coming at the end of time. The two are intrinsically linked. The first coming is a pledge of the second. Christ comes in humility at Christmas and will come with glory at the end time. Take, for example, today’s beautiful image from Isaiah — the nations of the world streaming toward Mount Zion while saying to each other, “‘Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain. . . He shall judge between the nations . . . they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. One nation shall raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.” Note what Isaiah presupposes — the human community is at root one, though it consists of distinct nations by God’s intent (seventy nations according to Genesis 10). And Zion, another name for Jerusalem, has a role in uniting them.   

Today’s Gospel offers a picture different from Isaiah’s irenic vision. Rather than reflecting a peaceful procession of the nations to Zion, Jesus speaks of great tribulations among them at the end-time. That somber tone owes something to the expectation of many contemporaries of Matthew that end-time confusion was already making its appearance in the political tumult of the day. But in the passage just before today’s gospel, Matthew 24:1-28, Jesus warns that such an interpretation of the political tumult was misguided; social disruption and natural disasters were not of themselves signs of the end-time. Jesus’s final coming would be unmistakable (Matt 24:29-36).  

We today are invited to have a role in these grand God-directed events in two ways. The first is to realize that though God encourages different nations and customs (shown by the seventy nations God that blesses in Genesis 10), the nations are united by a common origin and, as shown by the Isaiah reading, share a common goal. No one nation can say they are the only people of God, for every people is somehow God’s people. The second task as Christians is to support the fragile unity of nations. Pope Paul VI in his famous address to the United Nations in New York in 1965 invited all nations to work for peace, “No more war, war never again,” adding that peace comes with trust in God and doing the works of peace.

Richard Clifford, S.J., has taught biblical studies for 55 years, most recently at the Clough School of Theology and Ministry, Boston College, and has written many scholarly and popular books and articles.