It is easy to get off the track in life and even to get lost. It is easy to forget who we are and where we are going and what is the purpose of our life. Now a days we can consciously or unconsciously numb ourselves to life’s difficulties and pains through so many diversions. We fill ourselves up and tire ourselves out with so many meaningless activities that only increase our self-centeredness. The urgency and joy of Christian life slips away from us – sometimes little by little. The need to have a good relationship with God or with others seems distant and unimportant now. We tend to put off any change in our lives or even any sense of responsibility. We say to ourselves: I’ll get to it next year. Simply put we get lazy; we prefer to sleep; we even want to be numb to take the edge off our life. We are like the bad servant in the Gospel – we eat, we get drunk, we get violent and abusive, we plan our lives as if God isn’t a part of our lives. God is absent from our plans and daily life.
Jesus was very aware of this tendency in all of us. In today’s Gospel and in many other incidents in the Gospel, Jesus calls us to be awake and vigilante. A true Christian is not lost in the good times of whatever is currently popular in the culture. A true Christian is focused on maintaining God at the center of life. Reading the Gospel and the rest of the New Testament, one sees that conversion, change and one’s centering life on others and God was urgent in the life the of first Christians. Every day was a new encounter with God for them, a new opportunity for conversion.
We are called to have an attitude of being awake, being vigilante. This is not out of a sense of fear of punishment for suddenly being caught. It is a new attitude of service in joy. A Christian is the person who serves through the night watch – constantly awake, focused, and vigilante. It is a constant sense of urgency to share what we have received from God.
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Image: “Candle” by f_shields is licensed CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.