When I was a young boy, most days I would wait with eager expectation for the return of my father from work. It would take place about 4:15PM. At about four, our dog would start pacing around the house with its tail wagging. Each of the four kids would take regular glances at the clock.
Eventually we would hear the shutting of the heavy steel door of my father's van and we would all hustle toward the back door through which he would come and hug each of us as our dog was jumping up and down between and around us. They were very joyous and beautiful moments. We loved our dad and couldn't wait for him to return so that we could be with him. But I said that most days I would wait with this eager expectation. Some days I would actually dread his return – precisely on those days when I had done something wrong and I knew that my mother would soon tell him of my malefactions and I would suffer the just consequences of my misdeeds.
I think that experience at home is a parable for our disposition before the return of the Lord. If we really love our Lord, we should be impatient for His return, so that we can be with Him. If we're ready to greet Him, it is a time of "joyful hope" and "expectation." For those of us who have "done something wrong," however, who have not been "free from sin," who haven't been doing what we ought to have been doing with the gift of life from the Lord, then it's something to which we do not look forward – something even that we can dread.
How do those of us who do dread the coming of the Lord – either at the end of time or at the end of our lives, whichever comes first (and either may come in a matter of minutes) – become those who can await His coming with "joyful hope"? The great saints have told us the secret to this transition: it's by living each moment as if it is our last, by being ready at all times to meet the Lord so that we will never really be caught off guard when He comes. Jesus uses the parable of the ten virgins to illustrate the point (cf. Mt 25:1-13). The five "wise" virgins have enough oil in their lamps as they await the Bridegroom's arrival no matter what time of night he should come. The five "foolish" virgins let the oil in their lamps run dry and hence fear his arrival lest they not be ready.
We're called to be like those "wise virgins," with the lamps of our hearts perpetually burning the oil of love in expectation for the Lord. The light that is lit symbolically for us in our baptism – when our baptismal candle is lit from the Paschal or Easter candle symbolizing Christ the Light of the World – is meant to be "kept burning brightly" like a tabernacle lamp for the Lord.
If we know that the Lord's coming may always be imminent – even in a matter of minutes – it will help us to avoid sin, because few of us, thanks be to God, would choose to sin if we were conscious that the Lord were about to appear and catch us "in the act." The saints have taught and shown us by their example that if we keep the oil of love in the tabernacle lamp of our hearts fully stocked in vigilant, longing expectation, it is much harder for us to give in to temptations and for the flame to be extinguished.
But if it is blown out by sin, the way we get it lit again is by the sacrament of confession. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that the sacrament of confession is like an anticipated "second coming of the Lord":
In this sacrament, the sinner, placing himself before the merciful judgment of God, anticipates in a certain way the judgment to which he will be subjected at the end of his earthly life. For it is now, in this life, that we are offered the choice between life and death, and it is only by the road of conversion that we can enter the Kingdom, from which one is excluded by grave sin. In converting to Christ through penance and faith, the sinner passes from death to life [in this life] and does not come into judgment. (CCC 1470)
By going to be forgiven now in the tribunal of God's mercy, we have nothing to fear later in the tribunal of God's justice.