Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy
from carousing and drunkenness
and the anxieties of daily life
When our hearts are drowsy they are slow and stupid. The heart is the center of who we are. With it we can engage questions and makes choices with regard to matters of utmost importance. It is the heart that in this way determines our destiny. Thus we can understand the danger of a drowsy heart as the spiritual version of being half asleep at the wheel. We may manage to avoid accidents by noticing things at the last minute and swerving. But it isn't a skill on which we want to rely.
Physically, we get tired without enough sleep, or as a side effect of medication, and then ought to avoid driving or operating heavy machinery. But when it comes to the drowsiness of the heart, this is more than mere physical exhaustion. It comes about when we've allowed over-stimulation of the wrong kinds, including carousing, drunkenness, and the anxieties of daily life to use up our reserve of attentive spiritual awareness. Drunkenness is a problem in this sense not only because it can make us physically tired, but because it can numb us in a way that makes it hard for us to feel the importance of higher things. Our hearts become drowsy when we live as if this world is absolute, fearing the inevitable evils that the future will bring, and trying to draw as much pleasure and distraction as we can in the moment. Hearts like these have little use for going to meet Jesus when he comes to us in our daily lives and in the mass. Such celebrations will not rival the rancor and volume of secular parties. Hearts given over to fear about tomorrow, the next day, month, or year, will not have sufficient self-possession to give due thought permanent consequences and eternal destinies. The news cycle seems designed specifically to narrow our focus to the next potential disaster and prevent us from seeing the bigger picture from God's point of view.
For that day will assault everyone
who lives on the face of the earth.
The Lord will come whether or not we are ready. His coming can be for us a blessing or a curse depending on how we have responded to the grace he has given us to prepare for it. We want to be among those who remain spiritually vigilant, alert and awake enough to rise to meet the Son of Man at his coming, and to stand without shame in his presence. We are given both ample warnings and plentiful opportunities to practice for the final version of this, which will be at our death or at his coming in glory. We have the mass, the season of Advent, and the countless times he comes to us in the midst of our daily lives, all as opportunities to practice being ready to meet him. If we take opportunities such as these for granted it is unlikely that we will do better later unless we begin making changes now. If, however, we learn to welcome him each day, his coming at the end will not be a shock or unwelcome surprise. It will instead feel like the final version of something mysteriously familiar, like coming home.
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