When Brent Scrowcroft in 2002 advised President Bush that an invasion of Iraq would lead to an Armageddon, he could scarcely have realised how prescient his words were. Describing the descent into chaos in Iraq in terms of Armageddon or Apocalypse is a common-place among journalists today. The biblical references are implicit and compelling.

Today's Gospel (Lk 21:25-28,34-36) is about the Second Coming of Jesus the Messiah. Past, present, and future converge in this evocation of an ultimate, final disposition of creation, the universe and human history. Some see this being played out even as we speak. "When we go to war in Iraq we will do so to summon the Messiah", this is what some of the Christian Right proponents of the Iraq war believed in 2002. They still do today.

We humans are only too well capable of creating the Armageddons and Apocalypses of our direst imaginings. For many, especially the poor and the persecuted, this awful envisioning of hell is not merely the stuff of religious psychosis, it is an all too real, this-worldly present reality. Think of the recent histories of the DRD, Iraq and the Balkans. Think of the teacher disembowelled this very week in Afghanistan for daring to teach women in his school. Armageddon is our business, not God's.

So, what does today's Gospel have to bring us by way of "Good News".

It alerts us to the truth that what we most long for in life, love, happiness, justice, is not ultimately within our own power to achieve. We have immense power to destroy and to bring about minor Armageddons in our own lives or in the lives of those around us. Redemption, as fulfilled love, definitive happiness, absolute justice, is another matter. For that we can only live in expectation and hope.

In the meantime, we do our best to filter out the negativity within us, to live just and decent lives, as Paul would have it, and to somehow align ourselves with the abundant life within us that this year, as always, struggles to be born. Perhaps it is this life that is our Second Coming.