This Sunday is the Last Sunday after Pentecost, bringing us to the end of the liturgical year. It is fitting, then, that the Church asks us to contemplate the End of all things, when Christ will return in glory.  The 24th chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel, from which Sunday’s Gospel is taken, consists of a discourse by Our Lord “concerning the last things” and in this discourse Christ is preparing his disciples for the last things: death, judgement, heaven, and hell.