It Seems I Missed the Rapture
OK, so there wasn’t a Rapture of Good Souls that Left Behind Rotten Souls like me. Or if there was, very few people were Good Enough to go. Does this really mean anything?
Every day that I tend a death, I see a Rapture. I always tell the family that I am sure that their loved one is in a better place, and they will meet again some day. Most of the time, I actually believe it. I’m not sure if the thought comforts them.
How many people are supposed to have been taken? 150,000 people die world-wide each day. A little over 56 million people, counting military and civilians, died in World War II. Don’t those count as Rapture? To think of some sort of horrific event that kills millions of people at once sounds like a Holocaust to me. How awful.
The whole concept is a little bit anathema to a Catholic. Sure, John foresaw wholesale destruction. He also saw a woman giving birth in the sky, an aeronautical trick if there ever was one. It’s allegory, and a lesson, but not necessarily flat truth. Sure, prophets predicted a Messiah, but that didn’t turn out according to the literal truth everyone thought it would, did it? I was taught that I should try to keep myself in a state of Grace because I never could know when I would die. No one ever talked about a mass murder. I guess keeping to a state of Grace would provide in that event as well.
Each and every soul faces his or her own End Time, and I can tell you that few of the ones I’ve seen die were ready for it. I recently dealt with a 94 year old who refused to talk about her dying, or to make a will. “Not gonna happen” she said. I still don’t know if she meant the will or
her death. I hope it was the will, because she died. Thief in the night, indeed.
It seems so smug to me to say that “At a certain time, our selected few members will be taken to God and you horrible sinners will be left here, neener neener neener!”. And yet I can’t bring myself to laugh at those who are so disappointed, and where I live, there are quite a few. What do you say to these people?
“Dang, are you still here?"
“I’m sorry you didn’t die?”
“I’m sorry it turned out that you have to live out the time allotted to you?”
“I’m sorry you’re not Good Enough to be Taken?”
“I’m sorry you’re stuck here with the horrible Devil’s-Fodder Catholics like me?”
Yeesh.
And of course, the big question in my mind is: The promised Rapture has apparently stood us up. Does this mean that the accompanying End Of The World scheduled for October 21 is off?