This being the case -- and with considerable thanks to the way the liturgical cycle resonates in the monastic liturgies at St. Joseph's Abbey -- I'm keenly aware of the transition now underway from Ordinary Time to Advent, today being the last day of Ordinary Time and tomorrow being the first Sunday of Advent.
The theme of the last weeks of Ordinary Time is the Apocalypse, the end time, Christ's Second Coming, the Final Judgment. Both the scriptures and the prayer life of the Church often speak of this end time in terms at the same time ominous and expectant. Christ, we are repeatedly assured, will "come in glory," revealing the grandeur that was hidden from all but a few (at the Transfiguration, for instance) when he lived among us.
I have a slightly different take on this theme. For I imagine that the "glory" revealed by the Second Coming will not be the worldly glory that comes easily to mind when we hear references to it in the scriptures and liturgy. As I think of it, if anything Christ will come in an even more humble state; the difference between his earthly life and his second coming will be that at his second coming what will be revealed is precisely the glory inherent in his humility. The judgment that will fall upon all who behold him will be to fully realize that the first will be last and the last first, that humility and glory are one and the same thing.
The last Sunday in Ordinary Time in the Roman lectionary is the Feast of Christ the King, at which it is important to remember that His kingdom is "not of this world," not only because it is eschatological, but because it is the inverse of worldly kingdoms.

In East Coker, T. S. Eliot wrote:
What we call the beginning is often the endHappy Advent.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
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