“Don’t Become Complacent” by Colleen O’Sullivan

“Don’t Become Complacent” by Colleen O’Sullivan

Wednesday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time

Of this, I became a minister by the gift of God’s grace that was granted me according to the exercise of his power. To me, the very least of all the holy ones, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for all what is the plan of the mystery hidden from ages past in God who created all things, so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the Church to the principalities and authorities in the heavens. (Ephesians 3:7-10)

 

Jesus said to his disciples: “Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” (Luke 12:39-40)

 

Piety

Give thanks to the Lord, acclaim his name;
among the nations make known his deeds,
proclaim how exalted is his name. (Isaiah 12:4bcd)

Study

Late last week, my brother received a much-needed gift in the form of a double lung transplant, for which many prayers of gratitude have been lifted to heaven! Before that, he had been ill for quite a long time and part of a transplant program since the end of last year. Waiting had become the order of the day for our whole family. And the wait had gone on for so long that the waiting itself had become our reality, so much so that I was caught off guard by the call saying there were lungs for him and that he was on his way to the hospital.

When we are waiting for something, even when we know something will happen, we can be lulled into complacency. Every one of us knows that we will die, yet how many people are prepared for that? How many of us live each day as if it could be our final one? I would guess not all that many. As a Church, we proclaim our belief that at the end of time, Jesus Christ will return in glory, and all creation will be redeemed, yet the 2000-plus years since Jesus walked the earth have served to provide us with a false sense of complacency. There’s always tomorrow, we tell ourselves. However, in today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that that isn’t true.

We human beings are great at putting things off till “tomorrow.” We’ve failed to take sufficient care of our environment, and the results are plain to see everywhere around the world – ice caps melting, forests ablaze, wild hurricane seasons in some places, endless droughts, and consequent famines, etc. We postpone setting wrongs right or forgiving others until it’s no longer possible.

The Apostle Paul, as we can see, doesn’t procrastinate. He knows there is no time like the present to spread the Christian faith. He writes to the Christians in Ephesus of the particular work God has set before him - to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. The Gentiles are co-heirs with the Jews of all the promises of Christ. On every page of every letter of Paul’s that we still have, we see him proclaiming the Word, explaining it, and instructing his friends on how a true believer lives his or her life. Up to this point, no one would have conceived of Jews and Gentiles united in belief about much of anything.

You and I are called to follow in Paul’s footsteps. God’s grace has abundantly touched every one of us. We are all asked to go out and share that grace in some way with those we meet. Jesus reminds us of that in today’s Gospel reading, “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much.”

Action

God seized Paul in a highly dramatic fashion on the road to Damascus and shared with the former persecutor of Christians precisely what God desired of him. Perhaps none of us has received such an explicit mandate as the Apostle, but God has something for each of us to do. Neither Paul nor Jesus drifted through their days. They were on missions, and we should be, too.

When you pray and reflect today, you might ask yourself what you believe God has for you to do. Are you living a life of purpose, living out that call? Or are you just drifting along with the flow, with no particular goal in mind? Whatever answers you come up with, share them with Jesus in prayer, and listen for what he says to you in reply.