Thursday of Week 21 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
1 Corinthians 1:1-9 | Psalm 144:2-7 | Matthew 24:42-51
Stay awake, because you do not know the day when your master is coming. (Matthew 24:42)
Not so long ago, I was taking my usual after-lunch train ride with my business partner, on the way to another location to continue our discussion. The train was fairly empty, so he decided to sit down, but I remained standing in front of him. He asked me why I chose not to sit, probably assuming I’d mention something about the rather heavy meal we’d just consumed. I think my answer surprised him:
There will come a day when I can no longer stand. Until that day comes, I’ll enjoy every chance I get to feel the pressure on my feet, the slight strain on my calves, and the freedom of shifting my weight from side to side. This way, when that day arrives, I’ll have all these fond memories to last me for the rest of my life.
Besides, look around you. Everyone’s sitting down, yet everyone looks so miserable. It’s almost like they’re already imagining themselves stuck in a wheelchair!
I got the Evil Eye from him, but I didn’t come up with that on the spur of the moment. Indeed, it was inspired by today’s Gospel heard several years ago, and reinforced at the beginning of this year when I broke my foot.
Let’s just say that gravity and I have a difficult relationship.
✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞
Similarly, it’s always tempting to tell ourselves that there’s always tomorrow to go to church, to be in communion with our brothers and sisters in Christ, to “feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned.” (Matthew 25:35-36)
But we don’t have the equivalent of HURRY! HURRY! SALE ENDS THIS SUNDAY! to warn us that, past this date, we’ll no longer have the means or opportunity to make amends, for all the times we’ve put God and our fellow humans aside in our quest for earthly comfort.
Those people we’ve hurt, or failed to help? It’s really hard to apologise through a medical ventilator.
That terrible sin we keep “forgetting” to confess? Now that we’re in a coma, it’s on our “permanent record”, buddy.
For that matter, those penitential services we’ve been avoiding altogether? Try heading to the confessional when rigor mortis sets in.
I think the Quakers said it best, over a hundred years ago, so I’ll appropriate their words and tweak them slightly:
I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do, any kindness I can show to any fellow creature, or any contrition I can offer to the Almighty, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.
Amen.