Article 6: His Second Coming
Article 6: His Second Coming
a. Antecedent signs
313 Jesus Christ came for the first time in humility and poverty. However, he will come a second time in power, greatness, dignity and majesty to demand an accounting and to judge.
314 The major signs of his second coming are three:
- the Gospel will be preached to the whole world;[429]
- there will be a universal apostasy;[430]
- the Antichrist will make his appearance.[431]
315 There will come a time when men will go astray from the truth and will delight in iniquity,[432] a time in which the majority will not have the true faith in Jesus Christ.[433]. The certainty that this universal apostasy will happen one day must lead us not to join the triumphant march of any movement or ideology that is set apart from Christ, although it may seem that the whole world is following it. We must always follow Christ. And even though the enemies seem to be in the majority, we must say: we are surrounded everywhere, don’t let them escape. “All creatures appear small to the soul that contemplates God.”[434]
b. The final and universal resurrection
316 At the end of time the resurrection of the body will take place. All men and women will resurrect by the power of God. We believe in the resurrection and we are not afraid of persecutors who stalk the Church: do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul (Mt 10:28).
317 The time of this resurrection is hidden and “all those who had been misled to reckon the aforesaid time have so far proved to be untruthful.”[435]
318 The soul will take up its own entire body, and will enjoy the gifts of impassibility, subtlety, agility, and clarity – or beauty.
319 How great should be our trust and happiness by knowing that death has already been conquered! It has been conquered by the Incarnation of the Word and His redeeming Sacrifice. The Incarnation of the Word is the condition and guarantee for the whole universe: “the lack of life and of the salvation from despair for all men, the condition sine qua non and the guarantee for the whole universe are locked in the words The Word was made flesh and the faith in these words.”[436] “The Incarnation of the Son of God is the foundation, the source and the pattern of a new supernatural order of existence for all men, that in fact from this mystery they obtain the grace that sanctifies them and saves them, and it is a foundation of a Christian anthropology that is also projected in the natural sphere of thought and of life with its exaltation of the man as person, placed in the center of society and, you can say, of the whole world.”[437]
c. The Parousia and the Final Judgment
320 Then, the Parousia of the Lord will happen: for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice (Jn 5:28). And then they will see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory (Lk 21:27); the sign of the Son of man [the sign of the Cross] in heaven will appear (Mt 24:30). At that moment the universal judgment will take place. Christ, together with his chosen ones – you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Mt 19:28) – will separate the sheep from the goats; some will be put to his right, and others to his left; and He will say, Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom, (Mt 25:34) and depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire (Mt 25:41). And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life (Mt 25:46).
321 We must convince ourselves more and more that we do not work for ephemeral or fleeting things, but “for the most divine work among the divine ones,”[438] which is the eternal salvation of souls and the glorious resurrection of the bodies. We must say with the Blessed Luigi Orione, “Place me, Lord, on the mouth of hell, so that I, by your mercy, may close it,”[439] aware that we are working for eternal life.
d. The innovation
322 Then, the innovation of the whole material universe will take place, there will be a new heaven and a new earth (Is 65:17; Rv 21:1), so that the resurrected man in glory will be able to sensibly and clearly see the divinity, and in some manner, in the corporeal world. The following words will be entirely true: “the heaven, and earth, and all that is therein, behold, on every side; they say that I should love You.”[440]
323 The quantity and mode of this innovation “is known to Him alone Who will bring it about.”[441] There God…[will] be everything to everyone (1 Cor 15:28); matter will reach maximum dignity, manifesting the Divine Spirit, because it will be a perfect mirror of God.
324 For us it is only necessary to pray, to work, and to wait, knowing that the form of this world is passing away (1 Cor 7:31).
[429] Cf. Mt 24:14.
[430] Cf. 2 Thes 2:3.
[431] Cf. 2 Thes 2:3-10.
[432] Cf. 2 Thes 2:12.
[433] Cf. Lk 18:8.
[434] Saint Gregory the Great, C 35.
[435] ST Supp., 77, 2; cf. Saint Augustine, The City of God, 50, 18, 53.
[436] John Paul II, Speech to the Participants of the Colloquy about the “Common Christian Roots of the European Peoples”, November 5, 1981.
[437] John Paul II, Catechesis of the Pope in a General Audience, March 26, 1988.
[438] Pseudo-Dionysios, quoted by Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Selva de materias predicables, 9, 1.
[439] Points from February, 1939.
[440] Saint Augustine, Confessions, 10, 6, 8.
[441] ST, Supplementum, 91, 3.
Note: This English translation of the Constitutions of Institute of the Incarnate Word and the Directory of Spirituality is a draft version and is subject to further revision and improvement.