Friday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
Living in society today we often expect our lives to follow a particular timeline. We expect ourselves to achieve certain life goals by a certain age: marriage, children, job promotion, retirement, etc. It is easy to fall into this way of thinking. Yet it is a mistake to think that everything has to be wrapped up and neatly decided by a particular time. The scriptures for today emphasize the idea that we often need to wait on the Lord and that God often works more slowly than we might expect or even desire. Nevertheless God does have a plan, and we need to trust in it even if we do not completely understand what it means for us at the time.
The first reading refers us to the many activities in life for which God has established a particular time. It reminds us to consider the ways that the events of our lives are marked by the passage of time. There are appropriate times for different activities that have been ordained by God in God’s wisdom, even though we do not always understand what that is. We can relate to this today, for instance, in the ways that our lives are affected by the changing of the seasons. Right now in Ohio, summer is turning into fall. We are getting ready to rake leaves and make our homes weatherproof for the winter. At the same time, we also experience the seasons of the church year. Right now we are in ordinary time, but we are looking ahead to advent starting in a couple of months. By following the seasons and commemorating fast and feast days, we can tune in to the progress of time within the church calendar. This helps us to stay in tune with God, and it roots our Christian life in the passage of time.
The gospel passage picks up on similar themes. Jesus teaches at various places in scripture that God has a plan for his life. Jesus often emphasizes when speaking with his disciples the idea that his time on earth has a specific duration and purpose and that the events of his life would unfold at the proper time. In the gospel reading for today, we see Jesus explaining to his disciples that he must be mistreated and rejected, that he must suffer and die. Things are meant to happen in a certain way: Jesus must be patient and wait for them to happen.
In the light of these scriptures, we can reflect on the way that each of our own lives is rooted in time and in God’s plan for our lives. How is God using the idea of appropriate times and seasons to speak to us today? How is God speaking to us through the events that are occurring around us, or through the people that God has placed in our lives? Let us pray for the wisdom to see the ways that we can respond to God at the appropriate time and for the patience to wait for things to happen in God’s time.
-Joel Schickel