Be
Ready, Watch!
by George Aramath
Our church lectionary places the same Gospel message for the two Sunday’s preceding Great Lent. It’s as if our church fathers are telling us: “if you didn’t hear it the first time, here it is once more”. So what’s this crucial message? We must always be faithful servants by
watching.
Be ready, watch!
Our nation spends billions of dollars for the protection of its citizens. In fact, after the 9/11 tragedy, a special department was formed for this task. The Secretary for Homeland Security besought all U.S. citizens to be watchful, diligent, and prepared. For the 2007 fiscal year, the secretary requested Congress a budget of $42 billion. This amount is hard to fathom: $42 billion! All of it for the sole task of being prepared and ready. A part of the budget is allocated for a website the department operates:
http://www.ready.org. This site provides information on how to prepare ourselves and our families in case of a terrorist attack. It offers practical resources such as emergency supply kits and even a downloadable “Family Emergency Plan”. Their message is simple: “Be Ready”.
We, as Christians, are more emphatically called to be ready for the second coming of Christ and His Last Judgment. As we already heard from the Gospel, this readiness entails being faithful/watchful servants. Our liturgy refers to these verses with a beautiful hymn that’s sung after the reading of the Gospel. The place of this song within the Liturgy is not coincidental. After hearing God’s words, we are instructed to apply it. It is not simply in the hearing that one is saved but also in the doing. For we sing:
Blessed are those good servants, whom their Lord shall find
watching and working when He comes to His vineyard.
Girding His loins, He will serve them
the people who worked from morning till evening.
The Father seats them for the feast, and the Son serves them.
The Holy Spirit, Paraclete, shall plait crowns for them,
Halleluiah, and sets them on their heads.
We are reminded to be faithful servants, wakeful and working during His coming. Apathy must not set in. Look at what followed the days after 9/11. For many weeks, all of America was filled with great anxiety and watchfulness. If a bearded man was spotted, people looked with suspicion. Planes were filled with alert minds, eyes and hears were glued to the media, and church attendance sky-rocked! But after a few months, the people gradually became less concerned.
Similarly, we have these thoughts: Jesus hasn’t appeared for two thousand years; he hasn’t come; he’ll never come, at least in my lifetime. But Jesus instructs us in Matthew 24:36:
"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all
away."
In the days of Noah, we’re reminded that the people were “eating, drinking, and marrying”, meaning that they were just living out their daily lives, following the motions. Is this the case for us today?
Though we know not the time or hour, we know two things for certain. God will come again; there’s no question about this. No matter what others say, Scripture and our prayers constantly remind us of His second coming. Moreover, this coming is closer today than yesterday. Christ tells us a few verses later: "For this reason you also must
be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will” (v.44). When He comes, we should not be ashamed of how He’ll find us, or what He’ll see us doing.
So the next question is how are we to be ready. What are the steps to follow? Our forefathers didn’t simply give us God’s message and leave the rest to us. The living tradition of our church offers us the tools. This message,
“be ready”, appears in our church’s liturgical calendar two weeks prior to Great Lent. So, the church instructs us to prepare ourselves through fasting and prayer. We're first challenged to become faithful servants, and then we're given a path to carry this out, the 50-Day Lent.
This Lenten season will make one ready through constant reminders of what's most important: our spiritual, not physical world. Each time we prostrate before God, we are reminded of our true Master. Each time we are tempted to eat meat, we are challenged physically and spiritually. Each time we are questioned by others on why we fast, we are witnessing Him to others and ourselves.
The significance of fasting cannot be marginalized. Think about when fasting began; it started from creation. Adam broke the first fast by eating of the forbidden fruit, thus leading to his expulsion from Paradise. He died spiritually and physically. Christ, the New Adam, fasted for 40 days and overcame this temptation, destroying death, allowing for humanity’s return to Paradise. Christ is now our model. We, too, are called to follow in His footsteps through fasting and prayer. This is not merely a custom or tradition we follow. It’s a matter of life and death, damnation or salvation. Through the discipline of fasting and prayer, we are becoming ready servants who are cleansed through confession and the partaking of His Body and Blood, leading up to the greatest of all feasts, Easter.
“And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch” (Mk. 13:37).
