nineteenth sunday in ordinary time 8 august 2010

How often in the Gospels we hear Our Lord speaking urgently to his disciples of the need for vigilance, for being always on the alert, for not getting too lax, too complacent about our relationship with God. Here Jesus tells them “See that you are dressed for action and have your lamps lit!” The mention of lamps makes us think straightaway doesn’t it of the wise virgins and the foolish virgins of the famous parable, the wise virgins who had brought enough oil with them to keep their lamps lit for when the bridegroom would arrive. It is in Matthew chapter 25 and when finally the bridegroom comes we read that “those who were ready went with him to the marriage feast and the door was shut” (Mt 25 x) and the moral is “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour”, a phrase we find repeated in Matthew and also in Mark. There is a sense in all these stories that we must not drop our guard, that we are like sentries in a war, we have to keep scanning the horizon to see if the enemy is trying to approach. In the First Letter of St Peter we hear the good advice of the apostle: “Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.” (I Pet 5 viii) We think too of course of Our Lord’s request to his disciples when his troubles came upon him and he needed to feel their loyalty- you remember, on the Mt of Olives Jesus saying “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here and watch with me” (Mt 26 xxxviii) and alas, such is our frail human nature, none of them could stay awake!
What is this watchfulness that Our Lord wants from us? Well, it is partly to show him we care, we care enough about him to stay awake, to stay alert, not to doze off, lulled by the lullaby of the world and all its delights. But it is not just for the enemy that we have to be watching earnestly, it is for the One we love. When we are in love with someone, we are so excited to be in their company that we are wide-awake, we don’t want to miss anything, not a nanosecond of their company: that great love song in the Bible, the Song of Songs, has the lover saying “I slept but my heart was awake. Hark! My Beloved is knocking!” (Cant 5 ii) We should be as eager for Our Lord as that, as ready to wonder if we are hearing his footstep, or recognising the sound of his voice, as we do when we are besotted with someone. Because if we are listening as earnestly as that, then we will hear his voice- he will be speaking to us in all sorts of ways using all sorts of people and anything from the “Metro” to the Bible– things will leap off the page at us, filled suddenly with meaning because we are thinking of him. This watchfulness will show itself also in our fondness for prayer, our determination to keep the lines of communication with the Beloved open at all times- how many times do people text their boyfriend or their girlfriend? Maybe you are doing it even now in some corner of a pew! A bit further on in Luke’s Gospel Luke has Jesus tell us “But watch at all times, praying that you may have strength…” (Lk 21 xxxvi) and St Paul tells the Ephesians “Pray at all times in the Spirit” (Eph 6 xviii) and ends his First Letter to the Corinthians with the advice “Be watchful, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong” (I Cor 16 xiii).
And so in today’s Gospel we hear Jesus saying “ You too must stand ready, because the Son of Man is coming at an Hour you do not expect”. We have seen that one way of imagining this attitude is to think of the lover waiting for the loved one, but here we have another image: the servants who are waiting up to be ready to greet the Master of the household whenever he returns, however late it may be, however inconvenient it may be. Jesus says we are to be “ready to open the door as soon as he comes and knocks”. Here we have another aspect of this watchfulness: we are to be on the look-out for the least thing that our Master might want, to be there to hand whatever it is to him, to look after him, to be as it were thinking ahead to help him – the perfect servant, the servant he will love to have by his side, whom he can’t do without, whom he relies on, with whom there is an unbreakable bond of trust.
What we are seeing in fact is a description of the Christian life as we should aim to live it- vigilant and faithful is what we are supposed to be, what Our Lord wants from us above all. An attitude that is all about how we can serve Our Lord and how we can show him our love in our service, how we can grow in our love in our faithfulness to prayer and how, by keeping our hearts always fixed on him, we can discern his traces, his footsteps and the sound of his voice, in a thousand things that happen to us in the course of a week, how we can keep our distance from the snares of evil, how we can stay on guard over our frail human nature so that we do not in a moment of foolishness fall so half asleep with our fantasies that we sell the pass. Those first disciples were a hopeless lot, weren’t they- do you remember on the Mt of Olives Mark tells us Jesus , who so wanted them to stay awake, found them all sleeping “and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour?”” (Mk 14 xxxvii) We ask this morning for the grace to stay awake, on the alert and on guard. Help us to stand ready for Our Lord in every aspect of our lives. O Jesus, when you come, find us watching, find us with our lamps lit, find us ready to jump up and let you in- and then, like the Master in today’s Gospel, dear Jesus sit us down at your table and wait on us, take us to the marriage feast, give us the Bread of Heaven from the Table of the King of Kings. Amen.