I will be the first one to admit that I can be a procrastinator. For some things in life there is some tolerance for that bad habit. Yet others require us to be a bit timelier. Little things like paying tickets, sending in our taxes, things like that. Yet there are some things that are even less tolerant, and one of those is having ourselves collected in terms of our belief, and our actions in living out the Gospel message. Unlike things that can be regularly predicted in terms of their cadence, we need to always be ready as believers, because we have no idea when we will be called to be accountable for ourselves.
The parable in today’s Gospel is one that is a good reminder to us. We truly have no idea when we will be called to stand before our Lord. People throughout the generations have known that this day will come, they simply have had no idea when, and neither do we. The only real cure for this, is to live each day as if we will be held accountable that very day. To not put off the living out of Christs words, to live as He lived, and to do our best to be prepared. It truly is, as Saint Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans, the time for us to become awake and to realize that the time to make the changes in our lives needed to become true followers of Christ is not some distant loosely defined deadline, but right now.
There is never a wrong time to love, or to show compassion, or to redress our faults. The trick is to simply engage. To pray for the courage and perseverance to do this. To become aware at a fundamental level of the need to make changes and to follow through. Our Lord seeks for each one of us to be with Him, but he is also a God who believes in justice, so He will judge each of us, as is proper, because He paid the price for each of our salvation. The only question is whether we thought enough of His sacrifice to follow His commands and to seek to be with Him. The choice is ours, but it is not one to be taken lightly or put off in any way. Today is the day to begin.
The Deacons Bench 