Tuesday in the 29th Week of Ordinary Time, October 22, 2024

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.”

The Lord is speaking here about the end of a man’s life on earth, as is clear from the context, but his words can also be understood as pertaining to the end of the world.

“Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding.”  We should recall the Jewish wedding practices proceeded in the days when our the Lord walked the earth: on a prearranged date, the groom went to the the house of his bride’s parents and a feast was given.  After the feast, the groom led his bride back to his house.  The return to the house happened at no set time, simply whenever the feast ended, always after sundown.  When the couple drew near the house their way was lit by young women carrying oil lamps.  Upon reaching the house, the door was opened for the couple and a joyful celebration took place there.  It was key for the servants to watch at the windows or just outside so that they could open the door before the couple reached it.  Jesus is saying that we should be looking forward to the end of our lives on earth because then we shall be with him.  We can do this if we are “ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks”, that is, if we are “vigilant on his arrival”, performing his holy will.

How can we know his will so that we might do it?  First of all, we must pray.  We learn our Master’s will by going to him, speaking and listening to him.  We cannot know it unless we pray and to pray frequently so that prayer becomes habitual.  Prayer also increases our love for him and our experience of his love for us, for it is through keeping company with him that our longing for deeper intimacy with grows.  We also discern within ourselves what we feel drawn to do.  What do we think about doing for Jesus?  Do we ever say to ourselves, “If I only I could . . . ”?  It is worth pursuing that line of action to see if we are called to it.  Many times we hold ourselves back from true sanctity because we underestimate what God can do with us.  But we should remember that he has made a shepherd into a king, a fishermen into a pope, and a young woman from an insignificant town into the Mother of his Son.

“He will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.”  The action that the Lord describes here does not strike us in the way it struck the people to whom the Lord was speaking.  The social classes were very strictly divided at the time and they would have been shocked at the idea of someone crossing from one class to another.  A servant would never dream of sitting at his master’s table.  Nor would the master of a house ever consider serving dinner to his servants.  But here, the Son of God says that he would sit his faithful followers, whom he created out of dust, and treat them as his superiors.  This goes beyond reason, but we can trust in what he says when we consider that he did this when he came down from heaven and became man, when he went about begging us to repent from our sins, and when he died on the Cross for our redemption.  The Lord is saying that he will honor us in heaven in the presence of his Father.

“And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants.”  The first watch ran from sunset to about 10 PM; the second from 10 PM to 2 AM; and the third from 2 AM until sunrise.  We should consider the first watch as youth, the second watch as middle-age, and the third watch as old-age.  The meaning is that we can and should be ready for the Lord, doing his will at every stage of our lives.  By going about our Lord’s business throughout our lives we can be full of hope and anticipation on the day that he comes.