Saturday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
“Be vigilant at all times”
This is a refrain which the early Christians took quite seriously to mind! Of course, they thought that any day Jesus would return and they wanted to be ready to receive him, “to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man.”
It is strange how this warning from our Lord has so often been neglected in our thinking about what it means to be a Christian, to stand always, with Christ. Only to think of the terrible calamities of the twentieth century would be enough to remind us that not only the end of the physical world is in question but the many events which befall humanity, to think only of the wars as one example, not to mention other tribulations such as the pandemics.
Yet the Church, in her Sacred Liturgy of the Eucharist, after every Our Father, prays as follows:
“deliver us, Lord, … that we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”
In other words, and quite simply, are we not always and everywhere to be vigilant in prayer because of our need of a Savior, whenever God the Father chooses to send him back to this earth to consummate history!
Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB
Posted in Articles for Ordinary Time, Daily Reflections