Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XIX per Annum C
10 August 2025

  A fundamental truth about our faith and where it leads us results in the consistent understanding that we must be prepared.  We must be prepared to live our relationship with the Lord Jesus in such a way that it transforms us into people of greater holiness.  God has come to us in the flesh to show us how to live the faith in such a way that it changes us and our world for the better.  We are called to be prepared, however, not only for life in the here and now.  Rather, we understand that God has made us for life eternal with Him.  That life is something we must desire and choose.  And so, we must be prepared to meet the Lord when he comes again.  “Prepared”, in this sense, carries with it the full meaning of living our faith in such a communion with God so that we can enter the fullness of that communion in Heaven.  Sin and obstacles to our communion with God would certainly not be good examples of living in such a way as to be prepared to meet the Lord.

 We typically hear this message of preparedness most regularly toward the end of the Church’s liturgical year.  Being prepared for the Lord’s return fits well at the end of the year when, at that time, we are moving into Advent and its message of preparation for the Lord’s arrival: a twofold preparation for his arrival at the celebration of his birth and for his arrival as Judge at the end of time.  But it is good to have this message on the forefront of our minds each and every day.  Today, we get this little reminder of the preparation required of disciples.  Both the images of servants awaiting their master’s return from a wedding and a homeowner protecting his house from a thief serve to call disciples of the Lord to vigilance and preparedness for his return.  The message is quite simple, quite clear, quite direct, and quite consistent for every day of our life as a disciple: You must be prepared!

Let’s a take a look at both of the images the Lord uses.  We’ll start with the second image first.  “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.”  This image is unusual and surprising because the Lord seems to be comparing himself to a thief.  The implication here is not that the Lord commits crime or that he comes to do evil.  Rather, the message is that the thief has the element of surprise.  The lesson here, which is consistent in other Scripture passages, is that we do not and we will not have the advantage of knowing when the Lord will return, much like a homeowner does not know exactly when a thief may come.  The Lord is not coming to be a thief.  But he is coming at the end of time as our Judge.  We must be prepared for this second coming and its judgement.  In Christan history there can be quite a lot of speculation made by those who attempt to read signs and predict when the Lord will return.  Some even make specific claims.  Such claims don’t age well.  Those who believe in the Scriptures as God’s Word know that we will not know the day nor the hour.  So, we can only seek to live each day as an opportunity for our communion with the Lord so that we are prepared for whenever he comes.

The first image the Lord uses is that of servants awaiting their master’s return from a wedding.  The servants must be in a state of preparedness such that whenever he comes, they are ready to open the door and welcome him in.  The image goes on to indicate that he could come at any point throughout the night.  The implication here is that the master could return even into those late hours when servants are inclined to be tired and to be asleep.  The servants who are vigilant at any hour will find themselves among the blessed.  You may know that Jewish wedding celebrations would go on for days.  There was feasting, dancing, celebrating, and even a procession carrying the bride to her new home with her husband.  The result is that servants truly would not know at what point their master might return on any given day or night of an ongoing wedding party.  So, to be vigilant and ready is what would make one blessed. 

As disciples, if we are listening to the Lord and his lessons in these images, then we know that he is the master and we are the servants.  We must examine ourselves to see whether we are living the faith so that we are prepared to meet him when he comes.  Are we living the faith in such a way that we are found vigilant and ready to face judgment?  To continue the imagery, we slumber and are not ready when our lives are more motivated by secular values and goals.  We are growing tired and falling asleep on the job when we are lazy about our moral life and when we lack zeal to make change by confession and growth in virtue.  If we are living apart from the sacraments and not addressing what impedes reception of Holy Communion, or what impedes having a marriage as a sacrament in the Catholic Church, then we are drifting and getting drowsy.  If there is frequently some excuse for why personal prayer is not happening at home, then we may be servants who are ill-prepared.  If we aren’t sharing the faith with our children and others around us, that is to say, if we aren’t disciples who know that we are called to make other disciples, then the master’s knock on the door may catch us off guard.  There are so many other ways to examine our lives in light of the call to be prepared and vigilant.

Typically, this call to be ready for judgment carries with it some fear and threat.  Our judgment is certainly described that way in the Scriptures.  But, that is not the only way.  In fact, this parable and the image of the Lord as a master returning from a wedding has a twist.  It should give us hope.  In the parable, the Lord claims something that no master would do.  He says that those servants who are vigilant and ready for the master’s return are not only blessed because of that vigilance… they are actually doubly blessed, by what the master does next.  The master seats them at table, dresses himself as the servant, and waits on them.  Our call to be vigilant as disciples hearkens back to the Passover when Jews were to gird their loins, that is, lift up their ankle-length garments in order to be ready to move and travel after the Passover.  That journey happened at night.  And so, today’s parable also carries that image of nighttime passage by the charge to “light your lamps”, along with “gird your loins”.  Jewish expectation for the Messiah was that he would return at night during a passover meal.  We disciples of the New Covenant, can’t help but see the imagery of this parable in light of what the Lord did at the Last Supper.  A Passover meal at night where the master, the Lord, seated his servants at table and gave them his very self as food for the journey.  We can’t help but see Eucharistic imagery in this parable.  Servants who examine their lives and who are living the faith in such a way as to be vigilant, will find the immense generosity of the Lord who comes to judge.  For he is the master who does what no other master would do: he lowers himself, he humbles himself to serve his servants.  So, we find hope in the Lord who humbled himself to come near to us in our flesh, who humbled himself to die for us on the Cross, to save us, and to feed us with his living presence in the Holy Eucharist.  That immense love of God for us, in turn, motivates us to heed his call to be vigilant and prepared.  For we want to grow in love and life with the One who loves us.  We will not and cannot know the day or the hour of his return.  But we can take each day to grow in deeper life with the Lord who is coming.