One is inclined to be cynical about the credulous victims of the end-of-the-world hype that has been going around over the last few years. Yes, I have seen the film and I have the DVD in our collection. In it, terrible things were happening weeks and months before the three modern Noah’s Arks are launched in the mountains of China. The cinematographic effects are stunning! In our world, we have had some bad weather and unexplained phenomena, but nothing that would in itself cause the end of the world. However, for some, the recent hurricane Sandy on the east coast of the USA was the end of the world! People lost their lives, their loved ones, all their property…

What could “kill” our planet entirely? Plasma outbursts from the sun would annihilate our technology, sending us back a couple of centuries, but not us. That leaves us with being struck by a comet or a big meteorite. Experts in astronomy tell us that there is presently no such threat. We’re going to have a big comet to see next year, but it will remain a safe distance from the earth.

Planet X? I was brought up in the principles of the Enlightenment as are most people born in the mid twentieth century and before. If Planet X exists, someone must have seen it as such a big object – but they haven’t! Let’s be rational! There are no alien spacecraft hidden in our mountains. Was it not Chesterton who said “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything“?

So, life goes on, and the bills will still have to be paid on the 22nd December of this year. Some people will have tragically killed themselves – and brought on their own private ends of the world. Others will have spent all their money on what is offered by the most unscrupulous businessmen, as they will make money from anything. Others still will be driven into complacency by yet another failed prophecy.

Religious people often fit into the psychological profile of those who can only feel justified by persecution, such distorted eschatology or especially by the misery of others. Did not St Thomas Aquinas expressed that the joy of the blessed would be increased upon seeing the predicament of the eternally damned? It is probably the most damning characteristic of religion!

The end of the world we have to be concerned about is our own deaths, which will arrive faster than we think. We often allow ourselves to be distracted from wisdom by what is sensational, brash and loud, where reality is found within – in the waters of silence.

Yes, the end is nigh, but at the level of each one of us. It might be the painful lump in the body and the doctor shaking his head, plain old age or a banal car accident. The question is whether we will be terrified or serene…