Thursday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
Most of us would say that we have good intentions when it comes to living. We want to be honest and friendly people. But despite our goals and intentions for self-improvement, it is easy to slip into bad habits or even sinful behavior. We don’t always attend to the needs of those around us or pay attention to our health or regulate well our time on the Internet or watching television. We give into distraction not because we are bad people, but simply because it is easy to do. It is hard to “stay awake” to our larger goals and to maintain our focus on God and our end in heaven.
Yet that is what we are called to do. In today’s gospel passage from Matthew, Jesus tells yet another parable that has constant vigilance as its theme. Today’s reading boldly compares the Son of Man to a thief in the night and to an absentee master of the house. In both cases the people must be responsible, whether guarding the house or doing their duty well. At one level we can interpret this passage as referring to Jesus’ contemporaries and recognize that Jesus was faulting them for not recognizing him as God in their midst. His disciples who heard this speech ought to have recognized that many of the Jesus’ own people were not prepared to see him as the Messiah because they had not remained attentive to God’s workings among them; Jesus was not the kind of Messiah they wanted. They hoped for someone more like a Superman, who would dominate their oppressors and restore their power and presence in the land.
Instead, Jesus the Christ was a King who reigned from the cross, who offered his life for his friends out of love. In so doing he initiated a different kind of Kingdom, one that was not founded on power and domination, but rather on service, sacrifice, and love made possible by the grace of God and the working of the Holy Spirit throughout the Church. If, like Jesus’ contemporaries, we look to the Messiah as a way out of our problems and difficulties, we too will certainly miss God’s workings in our midst. We won’t know that God is among us; we won’t recognize Jesus’ presence. And if we cannot make out God in the here and now, we definitely will not fare well when the Son of Man comes again.
This passage helps us to realize that being Christian is not about a one-time incident of coming to faith or meeting Christ at death. No, being a Christian is a constant effort, a pilgrimage in process. Using Paul’s words from the first reading, we are “called to holiness” (1 Cor 1:2), and holiness does not happen all at once. The truth is that it’s difficult to “stay awake” all of the time. It’s hard always to be nice to our “fellow servants.” But to live as a Christian is to commit oneself to trying, and then trying again when we fail.
By God’s grace, we do not do this on our own. We see in the first reading the support of Paul for the church in Corinth. The Christian life can be hard, but we have the Church to hold us up, the saints and angels that join us in prayer, as well as the members of our Church around the world. We can stay awake together, responding to our call to holiness with joy. Today, spend some time thanking God for those who have made a difference in your life as a Christian. In particular, try to be grateful for those people who help you to “stay awake” and keep trying to live a holier life.
- Maria Morrow