Are You Ready?

For all intents and purposes Ordinary Time in the Church ends this week with this week being the 33^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time.  I know there is an in between week, next week – Jesus King of the Universe before the 1^st Sunday in Advent. Hard to believe that we are almost at Advent, comes upon us very quickly, “Like a Thief in the Night.”

Those were St. Paul’s words from today’s 2^nd reading to the Thessalonians.  The readings will begin pointing to our Lord’s Second Coming, this week and next in order to prepare us but also remind us of His first coming, the day of His birth.

St. Paul, however, was not so much concerned about the first coming of our Lord, but rather concerned with His second coming, which can come upon us like a thief in the night, just as Advent is almost upon us and it seems like it came out of nowhere.  How often is that true for many things in life.  For instance one day we wake up and we realize, my goodness I’m forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years old, or the people we know especially when they were children now have children themselves, or if we were waiting for something like graduating from High School or College, and then there it is, graduation day right upon us, and not only upon us but come and gone.

St. Paul is reminding us, so too will it be with the Lord, He will come out of nowhere it will seem.  However, as St. Paul says, “But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness, for that day to overtake you like a thief.  For all of you are children of the light and children of the day.  We are not of the night or of darkness.   Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us stay alert and sober.”  As good disciples that day should not catch us off guard, if we live as children of light, and what does that mean specifically?  It means that we are to be faithful and virtuous.  Light constitutes visibility, warmth, radiance, a welcoming type of feeling, as where darkness constitutes fear, coldness, lack of sight or ability to see, hence the opposite of light, as one in hides in the dark. 

We are not to predict the day of when the Lord will return but neither are we to write it off as if it will happen much later, since both are predictions and predictions are wrong, what we are to say and believe, is that it could happen this very day or the next, but either way I am ready and not only ready, but I welcome it.  If I do not welcome the Lord’s return right here, right now, there is still some part of me hanging to what is here which will catch me like a thief in the night, for the things of here, the flesh and of the world distract me from my prize, to be with the Lord.  In the end there is really only one question that matters and only you can answer it, that question is, “Are you ready?”