NINETEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR C
7th August 2022
Wisdom 18:6-9; Hebrews 11:1-2,8-19; Luke 12:32-48.
On the 3rd of July 1999, Whitney Houston released a song titled: My Love Is Your Love. The first stanza reads: If tomorrow is judgment day; And I’m standing on the front line; And the Lord asks me what I did with my life; I will say I spent it with you. In my opinion, this song is a true representation of the judgement day. On the last day, God will judge us based on how we lived a meaningful life. Today’s gospel is a confirmation that we will give account of our lives someday. Jesus told his disciples to stand ready, because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. There are two things here; the uncertainty of the time of his coming, and the command to live a meaningful life. Jesus said: Happy that servant if his master’s arrival finds him at this employment. He wants us to live a meaningful life irrespective of the uncertainty of his coming.
The modern mind dismisses the idea of the coming of the Lord as nonsense because we cannot control the hands of time. The modern mind is like the lazy servant who says to himself: “My master is taking his time coming,” and sets about beating the menservants and the maids, and eating and drinking and getting drunk, his master will come on a day he does not expect and at an hour he does not know. It is our inability to coordinate the uncertainty of time and the need to live a meaningful life that lead to all forms of recklessness.
The Christian disposition is different. We believe in an afterlife. The second reading from the letter to the Hebrews, speaks of faith as a means of making sense of the reality of an afterlife. According to the author of the letter: Only faith can guarantee the blessings that we hope for, or prove the existence of the realities that at present remain unseen. Faith enables us to coordinate the uncertainty of time and the meaningful life. Jesus said: Happy that servant the master’s arrival finds him at this employment. Jesus gave us the gift of faith to enable us live our real lives without fear of the uncertainty of his second coming.
Fr Anthony Ekpunobi, CM.
