Talk about being as clear as mud! As we navigate towards the end of the liturgical year in the Church and the readings mainly point to end times, the general judgment, and final salvation—clarity and comfort are not abundant at first. We en-counter images that are confusing. Take for example the idea of Jesus’ teaching on “loving our enemies” and connect that with the reading from Malachi this Sunday where God “burns up the evildoers”…a slight communications problem.

St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that “all language about God is a finite attempt to describe the infinite; an image applied to God needs to be both affirmed one way and, in some other ways, denied.” St. Thomas Aquinas made that caveat not to discourage God-talk but to approach such language with care and discernment, minding both what it says and what is does not say, according to Fr. Dennis Hamm, SJ, a professor of New Testament at Creighton University.

Scientists tell us that our sun in the sky is the source of life and sustenance on earth. We know that without the sun we would be like our neighboring planets Mercury and Mars—lifeless and desolate. But the sun warms us, gives us light, makes our plants grow by the fact that the earth circles the sun at just the right distance from its heat so as to be nurtured and not singed by it. We also know much better than our ancestors that our choices in how we use this “privileged relationship” with the sun is the difference between warmth, healing, and sustenance or being dehydrated, burned, blinded, and even cancerous by the solar power. It is our human choices and right relationship that makes all the difference in the world. The chasm between our positive and negative experience of the sun lies not in solar whimsy but in human choices. “These understood aspects of the sun image for God in today’s first reading give us a way to see how the same reality can be at once “healing” and “punishing,” according to Father Hamm.

In the second reading for this weekend Fr. Hamm notes that St. Paul, speaking to the Romans, spoke of the apocalyptic ‘wrath’ of God revealed in God’s simply allowing persons to suffer the natural consequences of their disordered actions. God does not burn them; they ‘get burned’ in their violation of the order of creation. Fr. Hamm wants us to realize that if the sun image reflects some aspects of the Divinity, it also fails in other areas. For example, the solar image is impersonal and deistic. It could mislead us into thinking of God as unresponsive to human need. That is why the Gospel reading—with all its talk of destruction, insurrections, and persecution—is so encouraging. Jesus mentions these components of the apocolyptic scenario only to insist that these disasters will never finally come between the Lord and His people. ”Some of you will be put to death. All will hate you because of me, yet not a hair of your head will be harmed. By patient endurance you will save your lives.”

We need all the images that the Bible offers to understand God. “If the love of God is as powerful, healing, threatening and awesome as the fire of the sun, it is as protective as the care of a nursing mother,” Fr. Hamm concludes.

Our Catholic faith teaches us that God will not let anything come between us and His love. That in the end, if we choose God and His righteousness—even as it comingles with our weaknesses and failings, with our sinfulness, He will make us anew on the Resurrection Day. He is all-powerful and all-knowing; the choice(s) are ours.