Twenty First Week in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Mt 24: 42-51
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.”
BE READY: To live without watchfulness is to bid disaster. Thieves work on the principle of surprise. They would wish to get us off guard. This, Jesus says, is how he will appear. Paul tells the church to practice love for each other and to be strengthened so that they can remain holy and blameless on the day of coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We need to be ready all the time in order to receive Jesus when he comes for the second time. The spirit which leads to unpreparedness is the spirit which says there is plenty of time. Such a deception of time takes out of our system the zeal to work hard. As that happens we lazy around giving room for the devil to take charge of our hearts.
PRAYER: Let us pray for the grace to remain watchful.
DAILY GOSPEL 