Be sure of this:
if the master of the house had known the hour
when the thief was coming,
he would not have let his house be broken into.
The selfish ego is a part of us that will never be prepared for the coming of the thief. This is the part of us that hoards possession, benefits, and blessings for ourselves alone and that refuses to share them with others or let them be used in the service of God. This part of us would certainly find the intrusion of the thief unbearable and do all that we could to stop it. Yet the thief demonstrates that the control of our ego over our lives is not so all-encompassing as we might like to believe. And so there is something inherently not only unpredictable but also unsettling about the coming of the thief. But if this thief is to be identified with Jesus it must be that what he takes from us was something that was actually his own to begin with, as with the landowner who wanted the produce from his vineyard. And if this is true then his taking anything from us will ultimately be revealed to be for our own good as well as those of others. We should resolve in advance to welcome this intrusion of grace into our lives as Jesus accomplishes things in us that we could not on our own because of the lockdown with which our ego had heretofore governed our hearts.
You also must be prepared,
for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.
Being prepared to surrender to Jesus when he comes to us in the midst of daily life is perhaps the only good preparation to be ready to surrender to him when he comes for us at the end of our lives and at the end of time. If we don't make a habit of handing ourselves over to him now it is possible that our resolve to do so at the hour of our death might be more imagined than real.
Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward
whom the master will put in charge of his servants
to distribute the food allowance at the proper time?
Though we are not the clergy who distribute the Eucharist at the proper time we nevertheless are meant to be faithful and prudent stewards with the gifts the Lord has given to us, including, fundamentally, the gift of our very selves. When we use the good things he has given us as he would have us use them we become more like him and he is able to trust us and do increasingly more through us.
Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds doing so.
Truly, I say to you, he will put him
in charge of all his property.
A singularly dangerous thought for a Christian is, "My master is delayed in coming". It is this imagined distance from the Lord that makes us forget we are stewards, and causes us to squander his gifts on short-term pleasures and selfish ambition. Against this temptation we are meant to keep in mind the reality of the master's coming at an unknown hour. He is, we must remind ourselves, closer than we realize. This will help us to remain accountable to the stewardship we owe to him. His coming need only be fearful insofar as we have been unfaithful. But to the degree that we have been faithful it will always be an occasion of joy.
Much will be required of the person entrusted with much,
and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.
The Lord asks us to respond in proportion to what he has entrusted to us. If we are in his Church and receive his Sacraments then that amount is quite substantial. But this need not be a cause for fear, but for encouragement. Let us allow the Jesus to take full possession of our hearts so that we may offer back to him all that we are.
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