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May 17, 2026 | Fr. Glenn M. Spencer
"The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.” I Peter 4:7-8
Peter’s declaration “The end of all things is at hand,” means that we are on the verge of reaching the intended goal, not of individual things but the whole matter is at hand. The word “end” that Peter uses here is the Greek word “telos” and if you bring to mind the old fashioned sailor who would stand on deck with his telescope extending one section after another till he has achieved its greatest strength, the end, which is the perfection, the purpose, the finality of the telescope, then you get the idea. The “telos” is the final cause of a thing — its ultimate purpose. So one meaning of Peter’s declaration that, “the end of all things is at hand,” is that God’s finality for the cosmos as a whole has come into focus and the Apostles have taken hold of that vision.
Furthermore, it is also true that the word “telos” means “the end,” or “fine” as in finished or done. Our Lord used a form the word “telos” when he spoke his last word from the Cross: “It is finished.” But I submit to you that both meanings of the word come together within the Church’s horizon: the meaning of all things, the purpose of all creation, the finality of the whole creation has been revealed to the Church in the Death, Resurrection, & Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. And furthermore , as a deer pants for cool water, as a wiggle sperm seeks out an egg to love, as a young man yearns for a wife, all of creation, all of nature, visible and invisible, things seen and things unseen, is moving toward that conclusion that I am calling God’s finality. And nothing can stop it. Grace is well into the process of perfecting nature.
"The Ascension"
Dosso Dossi
The visible and the invisible aspects of our Lord’s humanity — his material body of flesh identified by the scars of the Cross, the tone of his voice, his personality, his love for his Father, as well as his love for those persons who later recorded the events — all that, manifested after his resurrection, declares the finality of all things.
What does Jesus’ Death, Resurrection and Ascension declare about our finality? The first answer is that the Death, Resurrection and the Ascension of our Lord declare that being ends in becoming rather than nothingness. Being ends in becoming, not annihilation. It is being’s destiny, nature’s destiny, to burst forth into becoming, to break into blossom.
You might think that I have the terms backward, that becoming logically precedes being, that things somehow grow into being — but that is not the case from a Christian standpoint, which is the Christian horizon. Remember what a horizon is: a literal horizon is the limit of my vision from a specific point of reference. Looking out from the great window behind the Altar of All Saints over in Charlottesville, you can see just so far. Remember, a literal horizon “denotes the bounding circle, the line at which earth and sky appear to meet. This line is one’s field of vision.” (MIT, p.235) And the end of your vision is the end of your horizon. So if you climb to the top of the bell tower, as you go up higher, your horizon will enlarge. The higher you ascend, the wider and deeper your horizon. That is our metaphor for your personal, existential, real life horizon. Your personal horizon is not only the limit of your vision, but it is the limit of your knowledge, your loving, your caring and your valuing from a specific point of reference — that point of reference being you. It is your horizon. What I know, how I know, what I value, what I really care about, all my potentialities and possibilities are integrated into my personal horizon.
Here is a fundamental, infallible truth that we know because we are Christians and that the world rejects because the world is made up of naive empiricists. From within the Christian horizon our being comes first as a pure gift. Absolute, pure gift. There is no reason in the world for anything to exist rather than nothing, apart from God desiring things to exist. The things that exist in creation are not eternal by nature. Everything that exists had a beginning, except God who is without beginning.
Furthermore, there is no reason for you or I to exist except that God desires us to exist. There is no mechanism at work in the universe that, out of necessity, brought you into existence. There is not some mechanistic determinism at work in the universe that brought forth non-sentient matter, energy, and time, and then mechanically brought forth sentient material, and then of necessity brought forth sentient & conscious organisms, and then of necessity brought forth human beings who have the ability to look back at all this in search of its intelligibility, and then somehow, of necessity, you sprang forth as the person you are. No, that is not correct. You are not here out of mechanical necessity, but rather you are here as pure gift. All things, all being, as well as your own existence is a pure gift from the God who is God. You are because he desires you to be and he loves you. God loves what he has created. Being ends in becoming, not annihilation. That we know to be the case because of the Resurrection.
Here, get this: because existence itself is a pure gift from God who loves you, that is one very basic reason why suicide is an abominable sin. But there are many way to commit suicide: some people drift through life — call them drifters, drifters who waste their life, wasting your life is as well an abominable sin.
But the matter does not end with resurrection, unless we take resurrection the way a naive empiricist would take it, which would be merely returning to life as it was before death. And if that is what Jesus’ resurrection is then there would be nothing remarkable about it because people had returned to life before. Lazarus returned to life. But retuning to life as it is only means that we must die again. That is not good news. And even if it were possible to return — even if after dying again and again and again we, in some manner, returned to life again and again and again, we would return to the same old life. Eventually, like the Eastern religions rightly teach, that is just another version of hell. But the Ascension puts an end to that. Jesus was raised never to die again.
Here is another matter to take from Peter’s declaration: Christians do not believe that we really know anything without knowing God’s finality, not only for the object we wish to know, but for the whole creation. Reality is grasped from within a Christian horizon that has been formed by our Lord’s Death, Resurrection and Ascension. And it is his Ascension especially that shows God’s final cause for all things — a finality known through Mary, the Mother of God.
Why? Because it was the humanity our Lord received from his Mother, flesh received from his Mother, knit into the Eternal Word of the Father — our flesh dying on the Cross and it was our flesh raised from the dead, and our flesh lifted up to Heaven, and it is our flesh that reigns in glorious splendor from the Throne of the Universe.
All this is really real for us because we have “become partakers of the divine nature…” The Apostles insist that the children of God truly participate in the life and the love of the Father. Our participation in the divine nature requires that we first, participate in Jesus’ humanity and we participate in his divinity because the divine and human natures of our Lord are in union through his eternal, divine, Person. It is of first importance that we understand and that we declare that Jesus’ flesh is flesh of his Mother because that means absolutely that his flesh is the very same flesh and humanity that we all share. In this manner, the Ascension defines the Resurrection for the Church — our Lord’s human nature has been perfected in his resurrection & fitted for Heaven and shown to be really real in his Ascension. This reality constitutes the Church’s horizon. But it is a horizon. We would not know what is beyond our horizon if Jesus had not revealed it to us.
The Bride of Christ does not fear non-being, because Christ has ascended to the far side our horizon, beyond the limit of our vision, into the abode of Angels, into the bosom of his Father, and he has done so, not by taking the nature of angels, not by shedding his humanity, but as real, true man. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be,” but we shall be human beings deified and perfectly fitted to be with Jesus. Being ends in becoming, an everlasting breaking into blossom. And one last point.
Today, all this talk about God’s finality for men and things is not even permitted to enter into serious discussions in other communities we inhabit. In the world of the naive empiricist death swallows up life, annihilation replaces final cause. For the naive empiricists, Peter’s phrase, “The end of all things is at hand…” only means that life is short and mean. But naive empiricists are out of touch with reality.
This is reality: our human nature, material body and all, visible and invisible, that once hung upon the Cross, is participating in the life of God the blessed Trinity. That is reality. And Jesus graphically demonstrated that reality when he ascended to his Father, body and all, his humanity knitted eternally to the divine Word of the Father and made visible for his Apostles: grace perfecting our human nature.
"The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.” I Peter 4:7-8
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