5th Sunday after Epiphany 6 February 2022 Time
We should not begrudge mercy to others, even if they are presently unrepentant. They don’t deserve mercy but then, neither do we.
We rejoice with the angels when someone repents (Luke 15,10).
1) God allows time for this to happen, to be played out on
the arena of life. Repentance can be very slow in coming, but it is worth
waiting for.
2) Also time is necessary if we are to serve God in any continuous sense. How could we exercise our gifts and our best intentions if we had no time in which to do so? The sooner we start the more good we can do in that amount of time (early workers in the vineyard).
We want Our Lord to come again and complete his plans, which must be the best thing to happen.
3) But again we need time to let God to fulfil those plans. He deals in thousands of years and billions of people, while we are dealing in days and weeks, and cannot remember everyone’s name!
He needs time to re-set His creation which He does through Christ. It is a major operation.
More so as people are getting lost as well as being found. The wheat and the darnel can interchange. The question is how to keep those we have while gathering in those we do not yet have.
All this happens in the context of time.
We can accelerate things if we really commit ourselves to the task, if we work with God rather than against Him.
If every time someone complained about God's action they had prayed instead, that would have sent up a lot of prayer, and a lot of clarity would come from that.
Not to complain is a big thing for most humans, but it can be managed if we are careful. We can ask why to a whole lot of things but we do it with respect and humility.
We can learn something and make some good prayer at the same time.
If we keep silent for long enough we will see great things, supernatural things.
This is the new ordinary, where God is placed first, and acts directly for our good.
We, for our part, remember that we are on a timeline and going somewhere very specific. We are not just drifting about as those without faith must do.
We are preparing for a transfer from this life to the next.
It is not just a matter of waiting till we die but an active interaction with all that is most important.
We apply ourselves to the task. We see the time given us like one of those ‘talents’ in the parables (Mt 25,14-30). We can make our use of time fruitful and come back for more.
We grow in faith hope and charity and all the related qualities.
We learn from our sins and mistakes. We recover quickly if we stumble.
When the final day comes, it does not have to be that a vast number will be lost. We can help things towards a much happier conclusion by our fidelity now.
The Church holds out hope to the world, giving it that supernatural perspective which is so lacking to many who live only for the moment.
Even many within the Church have lost belief in ‘salvation’ as an urgent issue and focus only on the temporal side of things – environment, poverty, education etc. We do have much to offer in those areas but the eternal dimension must always be foremost.
Lord have mercy, and bring us safely to the final harvest.
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