Tuesday in the 29th Week of Ordinary Time, October 24, 2023

Luke 12, 35-38

Jesus said to his disciples: “Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them. And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants.”

In the Lord’s parable of The Wise and Foolish Virgins (Matthew 25, 1-13) we see how young women were to welcome the new bridegroom and bride to the bridegroom’s house.  These waited outside the house, equipped with oil lamps.  Here, the Lord speaks of the male servants who waited for their master’s return with his bride within the house.  Both the virgins and the servants had to keep themselves ready for there was no set time for the groom and his bride to return from the house of her parents.  In order to be ready to open the door at the proper time and welcome the couple vigilance was required.  Someone would have to keep an eye out at all times.

The Lord Jesus says to his Apostles, “Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.”  On the road to Jerusalem he is already speaking of the end times, a subject which will dominate his teaching during the last few days before he undergoes his Passion and Death.  He describes the situation of the servants: they are picked men with a specific task.  It is a simple one.  They are to wait in the house until the sign that the couple has arrived.  That sign would be the arrival of the virgins with their lighted lamps.  They would open the door to the groom’s knock and the house would fill with the virgins and the couple.  There would be joyous celebration with plenty of wine and singing.

“Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.”  The servants could hope to be tipped by the master for their vigilance, but the Lord is speaking of something greater here.  In fact, a complete reversal of their roles takes place: “Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.”  This new situation turns the wedding feast on its head: it is the servants who are honored by the host, the servants who should be serving him, his bride, and his guests.  It is a shocking development and the Lord’s revealing it would have baffled his Apostles, for it does not make sense.  Why would the host do this?  These are mere servants who have done nothing more than their duty.  The groom, instead, treats them as though they were his closest friends and family.  The Lord is teaching of the wild, abandoned love God has for us, his creatures.  He treats our carrying out the simple commandments he gives us as though we were doing him an incredible favor.  If a groom had treated his servants in this way in first century Galilee they would have thought him out of his mind.  

“And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants.”  The Lord directs these words at us living today, for the watch goes from 9:00 P.M. to midnight, and the third watch from midnight until 3:00 A.M.  That is, long after the bridegroom could reasonably have been expected.  It seems that at least some of the Apostles and many of their converts (see especially 1 Thessalonians) believed that the Lord would return within their lifetimes.  Now it seems very late, but we know he is coming.  If we are prepared for his coming, blessed will we be when he arrives.