Stand Ready

Thursday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time C-2

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 86 (85): 1-3 Turn your ear, O Lord, and answer me; save the servant who trusts in you, my God. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I cry to you all the day long.

Collect O God, who cause the minds of the faithful to unite in a single purpose, grant your people to love what you command and to desire what you promise, that, amid the uncertainties of this world, our hearts may be fixed on that place where true gladness is found. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture today: 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; Psalm 144; Matthew 24:42-59

Jesus said to his disciples: “Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come. “Who, then, is the faithful and prudent servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household to distribute to them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so. Amen, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property. But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is long delayed,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants, and eat and drink with drunkards, the servant’s master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.” (Matthew 24:42-59)

Stand Ready One of the most startling things that recurs constantly in history is the sudden end of many human lives. Alexander the Great rose like a great meteor across the sky, imposed himself remorselessly on the attention of all, and then suddenly faded and disappeared. In the prime of young and victorious manhood, “having advanced to the ends of the earth.. (which).. “fell silent before him,” his “heart became proud and arrogant” (1 Maccab 1:1-8). Then he suddenly fell sick and died. No-one knew that his end would be so sudden. Julius Caesar, conqueror of Gaul and later of Pompey, entered Rome victorious and became the first of the emperors. But suddenly he was assassinated — and by personal acquaintances! These famous classical figures are but emblems of a pattern that embraces great and small. A couple marry and move on to their farming property, raising a large family. The marriage is a good one but suddenly the husband collapses with a massive heart attack and dies. His wife and children are left bereft. Death has come without warning. Death is the mystery of life, and it is the most natural thing in the world to wonder why a living thing has to die. There is nothing untoward about the idea of a living thing passing from one stage of life to another, but the mystery is that life comes to its end in death. Man has generally surmised that with death there begins an Afterlife, but death retains its terrible sting. What is awful about death is its unpredictability. Two priests set out on a long drive north of Sydney, and they stop for ten minutes to pick up a third. Later that morning all three are killed in a collision on the roads. If they had not stopped to pick up the third, the catastrophe would not have happened because of the several minutes of difference it would have made to the course of events. No-one in the world expected that death was nigh, and about to fall. As the famous Australian bushranger, Ned Kelly, reportedly said on the gallows, “such is life!” The point is, that if life is like this, it would seem to be common sense that we so live as to be prepared.

Now, Christ lays down as imperative that we be prepared for a sudden death. He, the Author of life and the world, is warning us. It would therefore seem that normally we cannot expect that God will change life’s natural course to suit our preferences. That is to say, we cannot expect time to get ready for death — this may be our lot, but it may not be. It is therefore a matter of ordinary prudence that we always be prepared, and our Lord gives a parallel from ordinary life. When we leave our home to go shopping, or get out of our car to enter a building, we lock the door behind us in case a thief is about. So too, we remain prepared for a sudden coming of the Son of Man. “Jesus said to his disciples: “Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” Our Lord is even more explicit as to what this means. Being always prepared means always striving to fulfil our God-given responsibilities. It means being ever “on the job” of doing the will of God with as pure a love for him as is possible. It means making sure we are not distracted away from what God expects of us, and indulging in our own preferences, fancies and self-seeking. A person who has lived a good life, but then at a certain point dallies with what is not pleasing to God, and then with what is most offensive to him, is on a serious knife-edge. How tragic if at this precise point he is called before the Judgement Seat! “Who, then, is the faithful and prudent servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household to distribute to them their food at the proper time?... But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is long delayed,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants, and eat and drink with drunkards, the servant’s master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth” (Matthew 24:42-59).

Let us resolve so to live that we are always prepared. Crack troops are always prepared and are not caught napping. Let us spend each day in such a way that were it to be our last, we would be ready. Let us so pray that we are always ready. Let us so do our work that we are always ready — joyful, trusting, pure in intention and single-minded of heart. Our business in life is to do God’s will, and this life is the test of our readiness to do this. As our Lord says, “Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.”

(E.J.Tyler)

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A Second Reflection: (1 Corinthians 1:1-9; Matthew 24: 42-51)

Be Always at Our "Employment" There are many facets to the basic attitudes of the Christian. One is that of being ever in a state of expectation. The Christian is someone who is waiting, awaiting the coming of Jesus, and day by day he lives accordingly. St Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians (ch.1: 1-9) refers to the Corinthian Christians "waiting for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed." Our Lord says in today's Gospel that his disciples are to "stay awake, because you do not know the day when your master is coming" (Matthew 24: 42). They "must stand ready because the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect." Our Lord explains that this means being constantly at the employment given by the master: "Happy that servant if his master's arrival finds him at this employment." We must use the time of life to do as good a job as possible with the responsibilities which God in his providence has entrusted to us. Our whole life is to be shaped by this awareness that Jesus is coming. We must be ready.

The philosopher Heidegger’s most famous book was Being and Time. Our being is essentially caught up in time and this time is always passing, never to be recovered. Let us use all the time given to us by God to be at our God-given employment so as to be able to stand ready at the coming of Christ, be this coming in daily moments of grace, be it at our death, or be it at the end of time.

(E.J.Tyler)

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