A few nights ago, we had one of those nights at my house where the kids were up, again and again.  First, it was my youngest, who woke with a coughing fit and was annoyed that she was awake in the first place.  So we went to her crib, rocked her and calmed her down.  Then it was my oldest who, woken up by the baby's crying, couldn't get back to sleep.  So we had a conversation about the kinds of things we could do to try to help ourselves go back to sleep.  Then it was my youngest again - this time throwing up. And so on. The night seemed rather endless, and at the end of the night, all we had to show for it was a decided lack of sleep and the requirement to get up and do all the things that work and family life demanded of us regardless.  

 

It is having that kind of experience that helps put today's gospel reading (Luke 17:7-10) in perspective.  You might read it at first and think that the master is mean for requiring so much of a servant who has also been working in the fields.  At the end of a long day, the servants get no thanks or special acknowledgement at all; who is this master who doesn't treat his servants well?  And of course, for us reading this, we might well wonder, who is this God we serve anyway???

 

To read the gospel in this way - where the master is mean and the servants are never thanked - is also to think that living a life of faith is a bit like having a to-do list.  Once we've checked off everything on the list, we think, surely we're good to go, and surely we should be thanked for all those accomplishments. 

 

That's not really what either real life or our faith is like, though.  Just as the responsibilities I have of being a mother don't end just because I'm sick or tired or I've had enough, so too a real, true relationship with God is dangerous precisely because we don't get to put boundaries on that relationship, we don't get to say when we're finished, or when we've reached an end to the work we must do. Today's first reading (Titus 2:1-8, 11-14) emphasizes that the path to discipleship is one that never ends, for living temperately, and rejecting worldly desires is something that we must wake up and do, over and over for as long as we are waiting for Jesus.  (I do think, however, that we are allowed to complain on occasion - one of the reasons I love Teresa of Avila was that she was pretty forthright with God on how difficult it was to be His friend.)  

 

Here's the good news about all of this: our discipleship to God is also a statement about who God Himself is.  The work we do in witnessing to God and in trying to be a disciple never ends precisely because God, who is love, never ends either.  If God came to an end, so would our "to-do" list - and that would be a rather frightening thing.  No, indeed: God is eternal, abundant love, and because of that, we are called to be abundant lovers for as long as we possibly can.  We will probably fail (as Jesus reminded us in yesterday's readings), but this is why we pray for faith.  

 

Today, we observe the feast of St. Frances Cabrini, who was born in Italy in 1850 and desperately wanted to be a member of a religious order, but none would have her because she was in poor health. Eventually, she felt God calling her to begin her own order - the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart - and her little group traveled to the United States to be missionaries to Italian immigrants here in the US. They provided health care and education and tried to help new immigrants in the sometimes appalling working conditions they faced. For example, one of the reasons she has a shrine in Colorado is because she worked with Italian miners who suffered from lung diseases, among other things. Here was someone who didn't let physical health stop her from doing what she believed God called her to do, and to keep doing them in faith, and following the way of Love.

 

- Jana M. Bennett