in the now

“Stay awake,” Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel. Of course I read this over my morning coffee, trying oh so hard to wake up in the first place. Maybe that’s why it struck me so...

Jesus said to his disciples:
"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.
(Matthew 24)

Looking around at the world, it’s hard not to think that we’ve fallen asleep on the job. Violence. Severe poverty and outlandish wealth. Anger. Loneliness. The larger world aside, I know I fall into the trap myself often enough. Of judging other people. Getting caught up in the “now,” a now that is all illusion and not the real now.

In today’s first reading Paul tells us (well, he was talking to the Thessalonians) “for we now live, if you stand firm in the Lord.”

The real now is Christ. Living God’s love in our hearts and in the world. I know that, and yet how often do I actually live it?

And so I pray, with the words of St Paul from his letter:

May Christ increase to overflowing our love for one another and for all people,
May Christ strengthen our hearts, making them blameless and holy before our Abba God at the coming of our Savior Jesus with all the holy ones.
(1 Thessalonians 3)

Have a good day everyone. Live in the now (as best you can)!