Fr. Frank Majka, SJ – The Bridge

Who’s Afraid of 2012?

As if there weren’t already enough to make us uneasy, now we have the 2012 phenomenon, which asserts that when the Mayan calendar ends its cycle in 2012, the world will end and a new age will begin. People who believe this have different ways of explaining how it will happen, but they all agree on when — in 2012. (Interestingly, if Wikipedia is to be believed, many of today’s Mayans don’t believe there is anything at all special about 2012.)

What are Christians to believe? The New Testament talks about the end of this age and the start of another, but does so from several angles. Matthew, for instance, preserves the saying of Jesus that the end of the world will come at a time known only to God, not to us (Matthew 24). John, on the other hand, suggests that the new age has already begun because of the life, death, rising, and glorification of Jesus (see John 20, with its clear reference to the Genesis story of God’s breathing his spirit into Adam).

Embodying both of these strains, Paul writes in his letters that the whole creation is eagerly awaiting the end, when it will be set free to share in the glory of God’s children (Romans 8). But he also says that for anyone who is in Christ, there is already a new creation and the old has passed away (2 Corinthians 5).

The bottom line for Christians is that there’s nothing to fear from 2012. We focus our attention not on a calendar but on Jesus. The liturgy for Holy Saturday night says it best, perhaps, as it directs our attention to the risen Christ, calling him “the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega,” and declaring, “All times belong to him, and all the ages. To him are glory and power through every age forever.”