The Marks Post: The one thing

I have a confession to make. For some of you, or, who am I kidding, most of you, it should not come as a big surprise.
I am a nerd.
My latest nerd kick is watching YouTube videos related to end time prophecies. Some of these videos I don’t put much stock into, but others, like the ones on the red heifer prophecies, are pretty interesting.
If you’re not familiar with the red heifer prophecies, here is a Reader’s Digest version of it. In Numbers 19, the Lord commanded a red heifer to be sacrificed for its ashes to be mixed with water from the Gihon Spring in order to cleanse priests who came in contact with death.
That probably is an oversimplified version, but the prophecy relates to the coming of the Messiah, or,  in the case of Christians, the second coming of Jesus.
According to the videos, the red heifers will be sacrificed this Passover and will usher in the construction of the Third Temple in Jerusalem. This, in turn, will bring about the coming Messiah.
But, according to other YouTube videos, there is disagreement on where the first two Temples were actually built. Were they on the Temple Mount, or further south in the City of David? This is fascinating stuff!
Lately, with the declining health of Pope Francis, I have been watching videos on the most likely successors and the projected makeup of the upcoming Conclave.
From everything I have been watching on YouTube and reading on Spirit Daily, there is a real good chance our next pontiff will be on the more conservative side. I don’t mean “conservative” on the political side. A better term probably is “traditional.”
Many of these conservative cardinals support the Latin Mass and more traditional Catholic values that fall more in line with Church dogma. Conversely, the more liberals, like Pope Francis, want to totally end the practice of the Latin Mass and support issues such as the blessing of civil unions and the ordination of women.
One of the most recent videos I watched on the matter discussed how an overwhelming majority of the cardinals who will make up the next Conclave identify as conservative or moderate to conservative.
This fits in well, I think, with the state of the Church as a whole. According to a video on YouTube, many of the young priests around the world today identify as conservative. I can see a conservative shift here locally as Our Lady, Queen of All Saints installed a Communion rail and is stressing to receive the Blessed Sacrament on the tongue while kneeling. And, more and more people at Sacred Heart are doing the same thing while not necessarily at the Communion rail.
Now, there are other YouTube videos that combine end time prophecies with the selection of the next pope. These videos are on the so-called prophecy of St. Malachy.
Back in the early 1100s, St. Malachy made a prophecy that the last pope before the end of the world would be a Roman pope. Now, one of the top runners to become pope is Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state. He is from Schiavon, Italy, which is about four hours from Rome. Is that close enough to fulfill St. Malachy’s prophecy? Stay tuned.
But, one thing I read on Spirit Daily regarding the St. Malachy prophecy said it is “a bunch of malarkey.”
While we’re on the subject of the end times, I wrote a column about a year or so ago about The Curse of Oak Island where I said all things will be revealed when the Rapture happens. While I wrote that in jest, that saying is proving more and more true. We are not far off from the John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassination files being released, we are not far off from the Jeffrey Epstein client list being released (if they weren’t already), and we are not far off from finally finding out what is buried on the damn island in the North Atlantic.
Let me clarify one thing. Jesus said only the Father in Heaven knows when the end of the world is coming. I don’t, and, certainly, the people who make the YouTube videos don’t know. I do know this, though. Lent is coming up in a couple days. It is a good time for all Christians, regardless of denomination, to recenter ourselves and focus on the one thing that is really important. That one thing is knowing, loving, and serving our Lord. Martha’s sister, Mary, did that in Luke’s gospel. And, Jesus said, “There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken from her.”