7 August 2022
Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
In today’s Gospel reading (Luke 12:32–48), Jesus warns us about the need to stay alert and watchful for his coming, using the image of servants who must wait up and prepare for their master’s return. Jesus himself is the master who will return to his house, and, if he finds us watchful and prepared, will set the table of his blessing before us. On one level, our Lord is speaking of his return at his Second Coming—his great return in glory for all the world to see—but he is also, on another level, speaking of his more ordinary (though no less important for us) visitations in our daily lives.
Prayer is the key to our readiness for Jesus’ coming. And, as is always the case, Jesus himself—and his Blessed Mother, by extension—demonstrates what this readiness in prayer looks like. Jesus is always ready to do the will of the Father, even when that requires an apparent change of plans, as happens when the crowd follows him to a deserted place and needs to be fed (cf. Mark 6:30–44, Matt 14:13–21) or when the Canaanite woman surprises him with her faith (Matt 15:21–28). Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus cultivates and preserves his readiness in the nights he spends in prayer to the Father. And on top of this, there are the thirty years he spent in prayer, work, and waiting before he began his public ministry.
Today, then, let us ask for the spirit of watchful prayer which our Lord displays and in turn asks of us. In our contemplation, we can consider the Lord himself or his blessed Mother in watchful prayer, so that we might be conformed more and more to his image and made into the servants and disciples that Jesus desires.