Word to the Wise
Thursday, August 25, 2022 - Thursday in the 21th Week in Ordinary Time
[1 Cor 1:1-9 and Matt 24:42-51]"Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come." [Matt.]
"Staying in shape" is a lifelong process, whether it be physical, emotional, financial or spiritual!!! When it is done with a particular goal or event in mind - like climbing a mountain or running in a marathon or saving for a trip - a person can make a determined effort. But when the goal is definite but the date of occurrence is indefinite, the effort can suffer. The early Christian community was under the impression that Jesus would "return" soon. The earliest New Testament documents - St. Paul's Letters to the Thessalonians - show that expectation, but subsequent experience changed his thoughts! The Gospel According to Matthew shows that any attempt to guess or "figure out" when Jesus would come again is futile. Yet people have tried to do exactly that, using what they thought were hidden codes in the text, etc. etc.
The "Second Coming" and the end of "time" as we know it will occur when God determines it will and not before, despite our efforts to hasten the day by the way we waste the environment and go to war with one another. Some will say, "Who cares?" and simply live out whatever days they have without an eternal destiny in mind. For others, the event is part of their faith but not a proximate concern because they are more concerned with their allotted time, so they live with the prospect of human death and their particular eternal destiny. Jesus tells us we have to be concerned with both our death and his return and live in the light of both events, for neither of which we can know the actual date!! The basic advice is simple: "Stay in shape!" AMEN