Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: This is Sundays with Bishop Ken.
Thanks for sharing some quiet time with the Lord today. We welcome guest reader Deacon Eric Bissette.
Deacon Eric is a beloved spiritual leader in his home parishes of the Diocese of Rochester, New York.
Little Book's listeners will recognize Deacon Eric as a regular narrator for our daily reflections.
And now, here is today's gospel and homily.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke.
Jesus said to his disciples, gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master's return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.
Blessed are those servants whom the Master finds vigilant on his arrival.
Amen. I say to you. He will gird himself, have the servants recline at table and proceed to wait on them.
And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants.
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.
You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect the Son of Man will come.
The Gospel of the Lord this gospel tells us we shouldn't let ourselves be caught off guard when the Lord comes.
Whether it be when the Lord comes at death or at the end of time, be watchful, vigilant.
We don't have to try to calculate when the Lord is coming.
We don't have to keep looking over our shoulder to make sure we don't get caught from behind.
All we have to do is recognize the Lord is with us already.
The Lord is with us. Now here's an example that will help bring this out.
Let's say Jesus Christ.
Now this is all in fantasy.
Let's say Jesus Christ made a cameo appearance to the earth and spent a week visiting different countries.
Now you discover he's going to visit your hometown.
And you know how famous people sometimes do this. He wanted to visit a home, and there was a drawing.
And your home was chosen.
Jesus Christ is coming to your home tomorrow.
Imagine what any of us would do.
We'd scramble around to clean the place and make all sorts of preparations.
We'd knock ourselves out preparing for the visit.
And the truth is, the Lord is already there.
The Lord is with us.
He told us, I am with you all days, even to the end of the age.
I am the vine, you are the branches.
I will not leave you orphans.
I will send my spirit upon you.
The Lord is with me every day in my office, in my car, in my home.
Every minute of every single day.
So there's no need for us to keep looking over our shoulders, worried about a thief coming in the night.
There's no need to be frantic about a surprise visit.
The Lord and I are together every day, all day.
It's not complicated.
It's not hard to believe in. We already know it and believe it now. Here's the problem.
The problem is trying to take our awareness of the Lord's presence into all of our moments of every given day.
Each day has different sections, different compartments.
In my imagination, I wonder if it might be easier. If I were a farmer with a small farm and I worked it every day, I'd be close to nature.
There would be peace and quiet.
I'd be close to the earth and to life in many forms.
But that isn't the kind of life we lead today.
If we have quiet time for prayer in the morning, we have to move from there into quite different compartments of our day.
We have to get into our car and deal with traffic.
Then we move into all the complexities of our workplace, our family, our relationships, Shopping, paying bills, health concerns.
Each of these seems almost a different world. And we have different ways of acting in each, different values.
It's hard to take the Lord with us into these different spheres.
It doesn't seem the Lord even belongs in all of them.
We all need to think about it. We all need to find ways to sense the Lord's presence with us in all the compartments of our life.
Because it's where the Lord is.
This is something within our reach.
It's not complicated. It's simply a matter of awareness, consciousness.
The Lord's presence brings a certain peace, a certain purpose to every part of our day.
It's a wonderful way to live.
It's a way of life.
We have a name for it.
It's called Holiness.
May today's gospel help us keep our lamp burning all day long, so whatever we do, we experience the Lord's presence with.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us today.
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