21st Week, Friday, Sept 1

21st Week, Friday, Sept 1

1 Thess 4:1-8 / Matthew 25:1-13 

Paul instructs the Thessalonians; God called us to holiness.

 A motorist drove into a "full-service" station. Three attendants charged out to meet him. The first began to wash the windows, the second checked under the hood, and the third checked the tire pressure. When the trio finished their jobs, the motorist paid for the ten gallons of gas and drove off. Three minutes later the motorist returned. Once more, the three attendants charged out. "I hate to ask this," said the motorist, "but did anyone put gas in my car?" The attendants looked at one another. In their rush to serve, they had forgotten the gas.

Paul reminds his readers that we sometimes get so caught up with life that we forget the main reason why God put us here.

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Where does personal holiness stand on our list of priorities? "Be holy for I, the LORD, your God, am holy." Leviticus 19:2

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In the first reading, Paul admonishes the Thessalonians to journey to God in right moral living. In this passage, he stresses purity, as impurity was typically a pagan vice. Christianity is not in the first place a morality, but moral living in accordance with the Gospel. This is expected because we participate in the death to sin and resurrection to life of Christ. In this, we are ready for the kingdom.

The key point of the parable of the wise and the foolish virgins in today’s Gospel is not so much vigilance as foresight, but readiness for the kingdom, and only then, consequently, vigilance.

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Opening Prayer

Lord our God, source of all wisdom, you invite us to be wise and to encounter your Son with burning lamps in our hands.  Help us to be prepared to meet him in the events of daily life and in people around us, that we may enter with him into your feast that lasts forever. Amen