(Readings)
This
is a great time of year. School has started. The kids will be excited for a
couple of weeks. It’s the time of year for football games and pep-rallies. Fall
is almost here, a time of change in the weather – cooler days and hunting
season.
Students
are studying to sharpen their minds. Athletes are preparing their bodies and
learning the movements needed to perform at their best. The hunter scouts, prepares the hunting ground,
and gets the camp ready.
It’s
a time of making ready through tangible actions; doing something.
We
prepare through scholarship, athletic ability, preparation or even just the
chance of being in the right place at the right time for things not promised like
wealth, fame, success, and fortune.
In
all this busyness of things, we can forget what has been promised to us. It is a
promise of a much greater reward then anything we could possible achieve. It is
the promise of salvation, the promise of the heavenly banquet.
Not
all will be prepared for that promise. Someone
asked him, "Lord, will only a few people be saved?" He answered, "Strive
to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but
will not be strong enough.”
We
are all called to enter through that narrow gate of salvation. But, not all who
call themselves Christians will be saved. Not all Catholics will find that
narrow gate. Not even all religious will be strong enough to do what is
necessary to prepare.
Not
all will have prepared themselves for the salvation, promised by Jesus’ death
on the cross. And there will be wailing and
grinding of teeth when you see …, the kingdom of God and you yourselves cast
out
It
is not because we are sinners. The reason is we lose focus. Just like the student’s
mind that wanders or an athlete that gets lazy or the hunter who falls asleep;
Christians and Catholics take their eyes and hearts off God.
That
is something we can’t hide from God. Thus says the LORD: I
know their works and their thoughts…, and their hearts.
Jesus
tells us again and again to be ready. .What are we to do, how do we prepare and
make ready?
The
answer in found in the gift of our Catholic faith. If we live and believe what
our faith teaches us then we will be prepared.
Catholicism
is tangible. It is doing something. It is preparing. It is making ready. In the Mass, we don’t just
sit, sing, and listen. We act. We take part in praise and thanksgiving that is
crowned by partaking in the true Body and Blood of Jesus.
Jesus
asked, “Do you find this hard? Whoever eats my body
and drinks my blood shall have eternal life.”
Then
we are dismissed from mass and sent out into the world with instructions from
the Church to take every day to prepare ourselves. We are given tangible way to
live as Catholic Christian’s by works of mercy and social justice.
Living
just as Jesus speaks about for the final judgment: I
was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger
and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in
prison and you visited me.’
The righteous will say, ‘Lord, when did we see you– hungry,
thirsty, a stranger, naked, ill, or in prison?
He will say in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for the
least of my brothers, you did for me.
These
are not just instruction on how to live our lives and treat other people; they
are how we serve Christ. (mtyson)
It is how he will recognize us to recline at his table.
Many
will not be ready. Sadly, they will not be prepared. There
will be those who stand outside knocking and saying, 'Lord, open the door for
us. 'He will say in reply, 'I do not know you.”
Our
salvation is found the tangible action of being ready. Being Christian is about
action. Being Catholic is about action. It is our action and interaction in the
real world. It is sharing the Gospel in what
we do and what we say and how we live.
God
calls us all to be holy people, to prepare for that marvelous time. People will come from the east and the west and from the
north and the south and will recline at table in the kingdom of God. Some are last who will be first, and some are
first who will be last."
Be
good, be holy, Go out to all the world
and tell the Good News by the way you live your life and love one another.
Amen
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