In this section you can find a daily commentary on the Gospel of the Day.

Friday 28 August 2020

Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time

Word for today
The Gospel of Matthew 25:1-13

Unknown

Therefore, stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour. What does Jesus mean with stay awake? Is it an invitation to remain watchful, concentrated, to be circumspect, cautious? No, it is not. The gospel makes clear that there is a very strict relationship between the word awake and the word wise. In practice, the person who can stay awake is wise, the person who does not know how to stay awake is a fool. But if there is a strict relationship between staying awake and being wise, what does it mean to stay awake?  It means becoming, it means being aware. Being aware does not mean having more knowledge, having access to more information, it means discovering the thread, the thread of light and of love linking and connecting everything. Growing in awareness means discovering and seeing the thread of light and of divine love that keeps everything together and that links events and human beings. To become aware one must ask one's psyche to humbly obey the enlightened spirit’s perception that allows someone to see beyond the associative calculations, becoming therefore truly intelligent, as to say becoming able to read life instead of writing it. Awareness means gazing upwards to understand the immense vastness of life, letting go of the ego’s illusions that make life shrink into a tiny field of conflicting forces, solely devoted to taking care of their own interests and possessions, vanities, envies, fears and jealousies. Awareness means letting go forever of human beliefs and conventions, no matter how wise they may seem and regardless of their ideological, religious, or philosophical origin, to dwell in God’s love and to abandon oneself to Him.  The person who wishes to grow in spiritual and intellectual awareness can never, for any reason, think ill of God, doubt God, consider Him responsible in any way for man’s disharmonies, pain and suffering.
Jesus’ invitation, stay awake, is an invitation to be wise, to become aware of the extraordinary adventure we are given to live in this cosmos, in this life’s dimension. Stay awake is an invitation to get to know life, to wisely read the procedures, its movement, to lovingly and humbly appreciate their beginning and their end.  Why is awareness necessary to life? Because only awareness can generate in the psyche, spirit, and heart the happiness that comes from gratitude and gratuity. Growing in wisdom and awareness has no other aim than that of leading man to walk the ways of gratitude and gratuitousness, so as not to be imprisoned anymore in the cages of prejudices and ignorance, so as not to be chained anymore to the thirst of dominion, torn by envy, unbalanced by vanity and greed, so as not to live any longer in a foolish, mad, violent, mean, naive, reckless or unhappy way.  Stay awake is Jesus’ loving invitation to grow in the awareness of the beautiful gift of life, to grow in happiness and harmony, because when the men and women born on earth will knock at the doors of the heavenly cities, our eternal home, they will be recognized only if they are happy and grateful children. On that, the last day, it will be necessary to have grown in life’s awareness in order to be recognized.