GET READY, GET SET...

From time to time I will run into one of our high school Students standing in the hallway. I say to him “what class are you supposed to be in right now?“ And he Will answer “I’m getting ready to go to English class.“ The response “I’m getting ready come across as awfully evasive. It leaves open the questions “what are you doing in the hallway?” And quote, why aren’t you in class?" The great French religious philosopher Blaise Pascal writes somewhere that many Christians waste their Present lives Waiting for heaven, which is their goal.

In some of the recent Mass readings, we have heard Jesus telling us to prepare for the master's return. But he doesn’t tell us to simply “await” that return.

The center of his message is that the kingdom of God is already among us. This kingdom exists, if you will, in this spaces between us.

I need to ask myself what characterizes the space between me and, say, this particular brother. Is it envy? Sympathy? Jealousy? Or self-giving love? That’s where the kingdom exists already!

Yesterday I had this awful thought: I imagined that I had died, and Jesus was asking me how I had spent my life. And I answered “I was getting ready!”

That is not the response we Christians are supposed to give in accounting for our lives.

Blaise Pascal 1623 - 1662

We are each called to make a liar out of Blaise Pascal by spending our lives on earth being Christ for everyone we meet. We are supposed to be helping to build the kingdom on earth. 

We have no time to waste by just “waiting for the Lord to return.”