Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever. Amen.
Today's Gospel, taken from Luke chapter 12, our Lord speaks about the need to be spiritually vigilant. "Blessed are those servants whom the Master finds vigilant on His arrival." Luke 12:37.
The word vigilant comes from the Latin word vigilantem, which means watchful, anxious, careful. The Latin adjective vigil means wide awake. So for example, when we celebrate a vigil mass or as friars, if we celebrate a Marian vigil, it means that we are awake, we are watchful, we are on the alert for the day to come. For the next day, which is a Marian feast or the Lord's day, Sunday, if we're talking about the Saturday vigil mass.
Jesus says, "Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master's return for a wedding, ready to open immediately when He comes and knocks." Luke 12:35-36.
The phrase gird your loins and light your lamps is actually from the Passover in the book of Exodus, where the Israelites prepared to flee Egypt at night with their loins girt, meaning that their ankle length robes would be tucked into their waist, the waist and the belt that was around their waist so that they could be ready for travel. And with their lamps alight since the Passover meal and the subsequent flight in Exodus took place at night.
In other words, Jesus is telling us, be ready at all times for My return. Be ready means first and foremost, always live in a state of grace. Don't live in mortal sin. There are no spiritual days off in this life. We may have days off from work, but there are no spiritual days off.
This is why time dedicated to prayer each day is so very important. If we have time to eat and drink and time to maybe shower or bathe, we should have time to pray each day too. But remember, we have to pray as we can, not as we can't. So we don't want to pray in a way that we can't pray or put more pressure on ourselves than we can. But we do want to actually give ourselves that emphasis that we need to be prayerful every day so that we can be vigilant.
King David in the Old Testament famously took a spiritual day off one day. It was a day that he didn't go out to fight as he should have. And he decided to lounge around at home. And then he caught sight of someone who was not his wife. He committed adultery with her, then subsequently put to death her husband.
King David was a man after God's own heart, as we read in Acts 13:22. But his lack of vigilance was very costly.
"Be like servants who await their master's return for a wedding, ready to open immediately when He comes and knocks," Jesus says in Luke 12:36.
The wedding is the marriage feast of Christ, which the scriptures speak of. And the home that He comes to is our hearts.
In the cell of St. Therese of Lisieux and Carmel right above the bed where she slept, there was a relatively small sketch of Jesus standing right outside of someone's door with His head slightly bowed down and the back of His left hand tapping on the door. It's the door of the heart that He was knocking on there.
He says in Revelation 3:20, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with Me."
So at the end of our life, when Christ comes and gives a final knock on the door of our hearts, desire us for us to let Him in permanently. If we haven't already done so, will we open to Him?
And when He comes at the hour of our death, He brings the fullness of His marriage feast with Him, the fullness of the joy of His marriage feast. He brings paradise with Him.
What will He say to His faithful servant at the end of his life? He will say, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master." Matthew 25:21.
He will speak those words to our hearts. If we have been faithful and vigilant in this life, faithful and doing what's right and good, vigilant in avoiding what is evil.
The medieval commentator Theophylact says this. He says, "Let your loins be girded. That is always ready to do the work of your Lord and your lamps burning. That is, do not lead a life in darkness, but have with you the light of reason, showing you what to do and what to avoid," he says.
Have your lamps burning also means that the light of truth, the light of faith, light of hope and a light of charity need to lead you in this world of darkness. So much spiritual and intellectual and even moral darkness in our culture. We need to see things and to see life in the light of the teachings of our faith. We need to walk by the light of our faith, essentially.
The beloved disciple says in 1 John 5:4, "This is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith," he says.
Being vigilant doesn't mean being paranoid or scrupulous or living in fear. Yes, we need to fear the Lord, but that means we have to keep His commandments. That's what a God fearing person does. They keep His commandments. We shouldn't be afraid of Him, though. We also shouldn't be afraid of the world or for the devil, for that matter.
Essentially, our Lord wants us to always live in freedom. Again, freedom from serious sin, first of all, and freedom also from being attached to the goods and the things of this world. Freedom means a condition of not being in bondage.
Jesus says in John 8:36, "If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed." Then St. Paul adds where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 2 Corinthians 3:17.
God doesn't want us to be in bondage to sin, nor to lies, nor to the ways and the thinking and the things of this world. He desires that we cultivate that freedom now so that when He comes for us, we'll be ready and eager to leave with Him, to go home with Him to heaven.
Then our Lord says in the gospel, he said, "Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. Amen, I say to you, He will gird Himself, have them recline a table and proceed to wait on them." Luke 12:37.
So the marvel of it all, the role reversal is that in God's kingdom, God will actually serve us. He'll be serving us. He will gird His loins as Jesus mentioned for us to do, and He will wait on us.
That's the other meaning behind girding your loins. It means be ready for travel, but it also means be dressed for service. It's what our Lord did for His disciples at the last supper when He washed their feet. And when He said to them, "Which is greater, the one who sits at table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who sits at table? But I am among you as one who serves," Jesus told them. Luke 22:27.
Let's ask our lady today for the grace to be always reminded that life is a spiritual battle and that therefore we need to be constantly vigilant. Let's ask her for the grace to walk with the light of truth, of faith, of hope and charity burning in our thoughts, in our words, in our choices, in our actions, in our reactions as well. As Jesus says, "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." Matthew 5:16.
Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever. Amen.