Cornelius a Lapide

So likewise ye , &c. Near: it is as though Christ, the Judge, and His glorious Kingdom, and your redemption, as Luke has it, that is, the resurrection and everlasting glory, were entering the earth, as it were by a door. For redemption signifies deliverance from all evils and miseries. This will be the summer. And after the winter, there shall come this most joyful summer to all the elect, as this parable intimates. As when the fig comes into leaf summer is nigh, which causes to be brought forth most sweet figs and other fruits ; so when ye shall behold the elect to flourish with such great patience in the winter of such great tribulations as shall befall them at the end of the world, know ye that the reward of your patience is nigh at hand, the summer of a joyful resurrection, which shall heap upon you the fruit of every good gift, when Christ the Judge shall bless and glorify you. Verily 1 say, &c. This generation, that is to say, 1. of all men, or this age, which shall last until the end of the world. So S. Jerome. As though Christ had said, “ Before the end of the world all these things shall come to pass.” 2. Origen, Hilary, and Chrysostom take generation in a more restricted sense, to mean the generation of believers of Christians, that were now sprung from Christ, to whom Christ was speaking in the person of His Apostles, according to the words in Ps. xxiv. 6, “ This is the generation of them that seek the Lord.” Aa DURATION OF THE WORLD. 97 though the Lord had said, “The Christian religion which I have instituted shall not come to an end until Christians, who faithfully serve Me, are rewarded by Me, and crowned in the Day of Judgment.”