Participants will learn what the Catholic Church teaches about the Second Coming of Christ and the End Times.
The sign outside Our Lady of Sacred Heart Church on Boston Road advertises a talk about predictions based on a certain interpretations of the Mayan calendar about the end of the world on Dec. 20, and a parish workshop on Dec. 23.
SPRINGFIELD—Whether or not the world will end -- according to the ancient Mayan calendar-- on Dec. 21 at 6:11 a.m. Eastern Time, the Rev. William A. Pomerleau has things planned for the following week.
“I don’t know (when the world will end). I cannot predict it,” said the pastor of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church and St. Jude Mission in Springfield. “But I’m not living my life as if there is going to be a cataclysmic ending of the world.”
Nonetheless, he believes in being prepared.
On Dec. 20, in Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church, 405 Boston Road, from 6:30 to 8 p.m., Pomerleau, an amateur historian, and the Rev. James Nolte, who serves as parochial vicar in Pomerleau’s two churches, will speak on the history of apocalyptic predictions in Christianity.
The Rev. Sean O'Mannion, whose mother has Mexican ancestry that traces back to the Mayans, will address the issue in Spanish during the event. He is parochial vicar of St. Elizabeth Parish in Northampton.
Participants will learn what the Church teaches about the Second Coming of Christ and the End Times and how the prophesies in the Advent Season scripture readings should influence their spiritual lives.
The Rev. William Pomerleau will give a talk about end-of-the-world predictions at Dec. 20 at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Parish on Boston Road in Springfield.
The evening will include Confessions and Mass to prepare for Christmas -- or the Apocalypse!—Pomerleau added.
He said the Catholic Church teaches as Jesus did that “yours is not to predict the hour or the time” when He will return at the end of the world.
“Christians believe there will be a final judgment and a Second Coming of Christ, and we should live our lives accordingly.”
In fact, that is a message of the Advent season.
Advent, Pomerleau explained, is a time to prepare for the celebration of the birth—the incarnation--of Jesus more than 2,000 years ago, for His Second Coming and for His coming “into our lives every day.”
“There is something to be said for preparedness,” the pastor said, recalling recent natural catastrophes.
“Humans tend to muddle through and react after the fact. That creates problems.”
Asked what he is preparing for in the Advent season that precedes Christmas, he said he is preparing to celebrate Christmas well, and he hopes that by looking back to Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, he will be holier, kinder, more compassionate toward others and stronger.
Advent, he said, gets buried in the commercialism of preparing for Christmas celebrations, and the extended Christmas season—which begins on Christmas—is hardly celebrated in today’s culture. “Christmas is more than going to the mall to get the latest iPod,” he added.
People are intrigued with predictions of the end of the world and the notion that End Times are here, but what’s important is to be prepared at any time, Pomerleau said, though “we can have a bit of fun with the Mayan calendar (prediction)” and with millennialism.
But he’s not planning for a literal end to the world on Dec. 21; that could come at any time.