Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The Gospel today exhorts us to live in a state of constant readiness. If the heavens were suddenly rent open and the angelic host appeared announcing the imminent coming of the Lord, what would we do? What would be our gut reactions be? Excitement and jubilation? Or perhaps something else? One important question to ponder each day is, “Am I living my life in such a way that at any moment I would be ready to receive the Lord with the fullness of joy and leave all else behind?”
Passages like “you do not know the hour that the Son of Man will come” are sometimes read with a certain degree of trepidation or even fear, and it is undeniably necessary to heed the gravity of the Lord’s warning. At the same time, we should also remember that Jesus always leads with “Do not be afraid.” The Lord calls us to readiness because He wants to be able to give us fullness of joy and eternal life that we cannot even begin to imagine. And that does take some doing on our part. We have to dispose ourselves properly to receive the gifts that God desires to give us. As such, the Lord’s exhortation to readiness is ultimately born of his infinite desire to give us a fullness of life beyond earthly comprehension.