21st Thursday 'Stay Awake"

 “Stay Awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into.”

With these words Jesus is referring to His second coming. When He will come to judge the living and the dead. But this also applies to our personal judgment at the moment of our death. No body knows the day and hour of one’s death, because if he or she would, the person would most likely wait until the last minute to prepare for it. So God does not reveal that to us, except for some saints on occasion. We also do not want our soul to get broken into, by the devil, the thief, who wants to take away the gift of heaven from us. He can do this by us committing a mortal sin and being unrepentant of it.

Every day we must be prepared for our death and our judgment which immediately follows it.

How do we prepare? How do we live our life as though it was our last? First, we need to keep our soul in the state of grace, by living our life with God in this life, by placing Him and His will first in all we do. If God is first, He will take care of everything else. If we put God first, we will wake up in the morning and immediately say some prayers. We will ask God to be with us throughout the day. And during the day we will do everything we do, for love of Him and our neighbor. And most everyone falls sometime during the day committing some sin, because we are human. But as soon as we sin, we should immediately tell the Lord we are sorry and ask for His forgiveness and if we offended others to apologize to them as well. The Lord told us we need to forgive others, or He will not forgive us.

If we live each day loving others as much as possible, helping others in any way we can, and doing all we do for the love of God, then are staying awake. Personal daily prayer talking to God, thanking Him, asking Him for forgiveness helps us to stay awake. Coming to Holy Mass as often as possible, receiving Jesus in Holy Communion, going to confession at least once a month, daily reading a small portion of the bible, daily praying the Rosary all keeps us close to Jesus. And therefore we are preparing for our master’s return. Today, let us ask the Virgin Mary to help us to stay awake and not grow lazy in our faith, that we may be prepared for the master’s return, at a day and hour we will not expect.