Sorry, no audio recording.
July 2, 2010 was as
pretty a day as we will ever get here in western New York. The sun shone brightly all day, the sky was a
deep blue, the air was pleasantly warm and dry, and there was a light,
refreshing breeze blowing off the lake.
The day was perfect. You might wonder how it is that I remember that
day so well. My wife Pam and I were
sitting in Brockport that evening, watching two of our daughters in a soccer
game. I was remarking about how
exquisite the weather had been all day. And
then the phone rang.
The dreaded
call.
You see, Pam’s
brother, 51 years old, had gone out for a bike ride that afternoon, enjoying an
equally splendid afternoon down in Binghamton.
Chuck was visiting, up from South Carolina, and we had just spent time
with him the weekend before. But this
day, at the end of his bike ride, in front of his hotel, he sat down under a
shade tree, and because of a congenital heart disease that nobody knew he had, he
never got up.
A healthy, happy,
and I dare say holy husband and father of four, taken from us suddenly, without
warning, completely by surprise.
I suppose each of
us, by the time you reach a certain age, has our own similar stories – friends,
relatives, close loved ones perhaps, snatched away from us in the prime of
life. We know it happens. Many of us have felt or are still feeling the
pain. We were shocked when, a few weeks
ago, a man driving a truck northbound on route 590 in the can of worms, without
any warning met his fate when an out-of-control tanker truck spun out and fell
from an overpass, crushing his cab. We
know that life is fragile, uncertain, that we know not the hour or the place.
So Jesus’ words in
today’s Gospel have a certain urgency to them – He tells us “if the master of
the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let
his house be broken into. You also must
be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” The first lesson of this Gospel, then, is to
be prepared. Be prepared.
Being prepared causes
us to examine ourselves - what is the state of my soul, if the Lord were to
come knocking tonight? What is the state
of my relationship with God? The
catechism teaches us that we must be free of serious sin, mortal sin, to attain
eternal life in heaven. “Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is
also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent,” the catechism
teaches. It is a severing, a cutting
off, of our relationship with God.
The
Sacrament of Reconciliation, where we tangibly experience the love and mercy of
Christ, is available to us every single week, available to wipe away our sins
and restore us to God’s grace, restore us to relationship with Him. I know a man down near Corning, a devout
Catholic man, who had just lost a fellow worker in that plane crash up in
Buffalo a few years back, and I still remember his words to me – “state of
grace, just in case,” he told me. My
brother-in-law was indeed blessed, as he received the Sacrament of
Reconciliation the day before that fateful Friday bike ride. You and I should be so blessed!
But
this Gospel is about more than being free of serious sin, it seems to me. For you and I weren’t created only to avoid
sin in our lives, important as that is. No,
I think there’s an even larger message here – that when the Lord returns, He
should find us vigilant and doing His will.
Doing what we ought to do, not merely avoiding what we oughtn’t be
doing. In the Penitential Act, we pray
for forgiveness and mercy – for my thoughts and words, for what I have done and
for what I have failed to do. Indeed,
the Lord says “the servant who knew his master’s will but did not make preparations
nor act in accord with his will shall be beaten severely.”
This
lesson of the Gospel, then, is that we’d better get busy – busy discerning
God’s will, God’s will in your life, and in mine, and busy going about
fulfilling it. How am I being called by
God to love and serve Him, to love and serve my neighbor? What gifts and talents did God give me and
how is God calling me to use those gifts and talents to build His Kingdom? In what way is He calling me to give Him the
rest of my life?
And, my
sisters and brothers, we may have many such “callings” in our lives. God may call us over and over again to
different types of service. Mother
Teresa was perfectly happy as a school teacher for the children of the wealthy
in India when she received what she said was her “Call within a call.” “I thirst” she heard Our Blessed Lord tell
her, and from that moment she knew that she must go to serve the poorest of the
poor, the starving, diseased and dying in the streets.
My
brothers and sisters, we do not have an unlimited amount of time on this
earth. You and I were created for a
purpose, each of us for our own specific role in fulfilling God’s plan. It’s why we were conceived, why we were
born. And He has entrusted you and me
with much, so much is demanded of us.
Fed and
nourished by His very Body and Blood, we will soon be commanded to Go Forth
from here, forth to be the living presence of Jesus Christ in our world. May we fully accept this challenge with our
entire lives, so that when the Master finally comes, He will say to each of us
“well done, my good and faithful servant.”
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