26th November >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Luke 21:34-36 for Saturday, Thirty Fourth Week in Ordinary Time: ‘Stay awake, praying at all times’. (2024)

26th November >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Luke 21:34-36for Saturday, Thirty Fourth Week in Ordinary Time: ‘Stay awake, praying at all times’.

Saturday, Thirty Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel (Except USA)

Luke 21:34-36

That day will be sprung on you suddenly, like a trap.

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘Watch yourselves, or your hearts will be coarsened with debauchery and drunkenness and the cares of life, and that day will be sprung on you suddenly, like a trap. For it will come down on every living man on the face of the earth. Stay awake, praying at all times for the strength to survive all that is going to happen, and to stand with confidence before the Son of Man.’

Gospel (USA)

Luke 21:34-36

Be vigilant that you may have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent.

Jesus said to his disciples: “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap. For that day will assault everyone who lives on the face of the earth. Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Reflections (7)

(i)Saturday, Thirty Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

In the short gospel reading, Jesus makes two calls on his disciples, ‘Watch yourselves’, and ‘Stay awake, praying at all times’. The call to stay away, praying at all times, is a call to watch the Lord, to keep our focus on the Lord. The call to watch the Lord is more fundamental than the call to watch ourselves. It is only by continuing to look upon the Lord in prayer that we will be able to see ourselves as we truly are, as the Lord sees us. When we hear the call of Jesus to pray at all times, we may wonder how we could possibly pray at all times. Yes, we can pray some of the time, but, surely, not ‘all times’. However, Jesus is not calling on us to be on our knees in prayer at all times or to be constantly in the church. Praying at all times is more a prayerful awareness of the Lord’s presence to us. We can enter into this awareness ‘at all times’, wherever we might be, whatever we might be doing. Just as the Lord is present to us at all times, he calls on us to be present to him at all times. That doesn’t mean we cannot be present to others or to the task of the moment. It is just that our attentiveness to others and to all that we do during the day is contained within an underlying attentiveness to the Lord, that ‘staying awake’ to him that Jesus talks about in the gospel reading. He also assures us in that gospel reading that if we are prayerfully present to him at all times in this way, we will receive from him the strength we need to engage with all that comes our way, ‘all that is going to happen’, in the words of the gospel reading.

And/Or

(ii)Saturday, Thirty Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

This is the last day of the church’s liturgical year and the first reading this morning is taken from the last chapter of the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation. The visionary John gives us an image of heaven. It is a city of life. A river of life flows through it and on either side of the river are trees of life each of them bearing a fruit crop every month of the year. It is a city of light, in which day never gives way to night, because the Lord God constantly shines on its inhabitants and they in turn are always awake and alert to God’s presence, worshipping him as they behold him face to face. There will always be a gap between the heavenly city and our earthly city where the presence of death and darkness can be all too apparent. Yet, in this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus calls upon us to behave in our earthly city in ways that anticipate how we will be in the heavenly city. We are to ‘stay awake’ to the Lord’s presence at the heart of this earthly city, praying at all times. Such prayer, such worship, is not just an activity for church. As Paul says in his letter to the Romans, all of our life is to be an act of spiritual worship, in which we offer ourselves to God and God’s purpose. Paul declares this will involve not allowing ourselves to be conformed to the values of this world, or as Jesus puts it in today’s gospel reading, nor allowing our hearts to become coarsened by the pleasures and cares of this life. If we can ‘stay awake’ in this rich sense, then something of the heavenly city will become a reality here on earth in and through our lives.

And/Or

(iii) Saturday, Thirty Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

In the gospel reading Jesus warns against becoming so immersed in the attractions and cares of life that we fail to see beyond them. We need to step back and find a space in which we can become aware of the Lord and his presence to us. In the language of the gospel we are to watch, to become watchful, attentive to the Lord within and beyond all of life. Such watchfulness and attentiveness is at the heart of prayer. That is what prayer is, which is why Jesus says, ‘stay awake, praying at all times’. That exhortation to pray at all times may sound strange to our ears. How can we pray at all times when we have so much to do, so many responsibilities to meet. Paul says something similar at the end of his first letter to the Thessalonians when he calls on the church to ‘pray without ceasing’. Jesus and Paul were calling for a prayerful stance towards life, a prayerful attentiveness to the Lord at all times, before all situations, in the midst of all our tasks. To help us do this, we could take a very short prayer drawn from the Scriptures the simple Advent prayer, which was our response to the Responsorial Psalm, ‘Marantha, Come Lord Jesus’. We could pray that prayer anywhere we happen to be, at any time. In the words of the gospel reading, such a prayerful posture towards life will give us the strength from God that we need to survive whatever is ahead of us.

And/Or

(iv) Saturday, Thirty Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

This is the last day of the church’s liturgical year. The new liturgical year begins this evening when we celebrate the first Sunday of Advent. Soon the Advent wreath, the Jesse tree and the Advent banners will go up in the church. The colour of the vestments will change from green to purple. Advent is above all a time of prayerful waiting for the coming of the Lord. It is appropriate then that the gospel for the last day of the liturgical year, just on the cusp of Advent, should highlight the need for that attitude of prayerful waiting and watching. Jesus has been speaking about very dark experiences, which we have been hearing about in the gospels this past week. He also declared that in the midst of these painful and dark experiences the Son of Man will come in all his glory. Now in this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus calls upon us to stay awake, praying at all times for the strength to stand with confidence before the Son of Man. Jesus has been speaking about the future but this is a call for the present, for the here and now. Jesus acknowledges in that gospel reading that the cares and pleasures of this earthly life have enormous power to absorb us completely. Our defence against that is to pray at all times, to be prayerful people, attentive and awake to the Lord who is both coming and present. Jesus assures us that this prayerful stance towards life, this Advent stance, will give us the strength to stand with confidence before the Lord, just as one would stand before a friend who knows us and whom we have come to know.

And/Or

(v) Saturday, Thirty Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

The call of Jesus in today’s gospel reading is to ‘Watch’ and to ‘Stay awake’. It is clear that Jesus is speaking of a spiritual state of watchfulness or wakefulness because he identifies staying away with ‘praying at all times’. We might well ask, ‘How can we pray at all times?’ Surely the most we can expect of ourselves is to pray from time to time, maybe at set periods of the day. However, that call of Jesus is echoed by Saint Paul in what was almost certainly his earliest letter to have survived, dated to about 20 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. In his first letter to the Thessalonians, he calls on the church to ‘pray without ceasing’. Paul was well aware that believers could not spend all their time at prayer. Indeed, in the previous chapter of that letter he called on believers to ‘work with your hands, as we directed you’. The call of Jesus to pray at all times and of Paul to pray without ceasing could be understood as relating to an attitude of prayer that we bring to everything that we do. As we are engaged in our daily tasks we remain spiritually awake to the Lord who is present to us at all times. This could be termed a contemplative attitude to all of life. We live and move and have our being in the awareness of the Lord who is beside us and before us and behind us. If we are to develop this contemplative attitude, there needs to be some moments in our lives when we step back from all we do to give ourselves over completely to prayerful engagement with the Lord.

And/Or

(vi)Saturday, Thirty Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

The response to today’s responsorial psalm is ‘Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus!’, the great Advent prayer. We are on the cusp of Advent which begins this evening. Advent is a quiet, prayerful season. Today’s gospel reading captures the mood of Advent, even though it is the last gospel reading of Ordinary Time, ‘Stay awake, praying at all times’. That call to prayerful watchfulness is very much the call of Advent. The reference to ‘praying at all times’ suggests that we are to be in a permanent state of prayerful attentiveness. Even when we are not praying in any focused way, we are to have a prayerful spirit, one which is attentive to the Lord’s coming and presence. The gospel reading warns us against allowing ourselves to be distracted and absorbed by the pleasures and cares of life. Advent is a time for recovering our prayerful spirit, our prayerful attentiveness to the Lord’s presence in our lives. That wonderful first reading from the concluding chapter of the Book of the Apocalypse reminds us that the Lord who is coming, who is present to us, is a Lord of light and life. From the throne of the Lord in the heavenly city flows the river of life irrigating the trees of life, and there will be no need for lamplight or sunlight in this city because the Lord himself will be the light that penetrates everyone and everything. It is this same Lord of life and light in the heavenly city who comes to us each day of our earthly lives and to whom we are called to be prayerfully attentive.

And/Or

(vii) Saturday, Thirty Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

The Season of Advent begins with the Vigil Mass later on today. Today’s readings already have a very Advent feel to them, with the response to the psalm being the Advent prayer, ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’ and the call of the gospel reading to ‘Stay awake, praying at all times’. The mood of Advent is that of prayerful waiting. It must have been the mood of Mary as she waited for her son to be born. When she visited Elizabeth, having conceived Jesus in her womb, Elizabeth greeted her as ‘the mother of my Lord’. Mary had welcomed the Lord Jesus into her life by her ‘yes’ to God’s call to her through the angel Gabriel. Advent is a season when, like Mary, we welcome the Lord Jesus into our lives more fully. One way of giving expression to our desire to welcome Jesus into our lives more fully is by praying that Advent prayer, ‘Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus!’ Even to spend a few minutes of each day of Advent quietly praying that prayer to ourselves would be a wonderful way to prepare for Christmas. According to Jesus in the gospel reading, whenever we pray we are given strength which allows us to stand with confidence before the Son of Man. We all need inner, spiritual strength, especially in these uncertain times. The angel Gabriel promised Mary that the power of the Most High would overshadow here. As we prayerfully wait this Advent, we too will be overshadowed by the power and strength of the Most High. As we open ourselves to the coming of the Lord Jesus, our inner self will grow stronger, and we will be able to bring something of the Lord’s strength to others this Advent, especially to those most in need of it.

Fr. Martin Hogan.