Gospel: Mt. 24: 37-44 (Focus on V 44)
So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect,
the Son of Man will come.
Passport to eternity
By Bishop Precioso D. Cantillas, SDB, DD
An employee opted for early retirement in order to get his lump sum retirement pay. A sickness which unexpectedly came up forced him to stop working to get the needed surgical and medical treatment. One might say that luckily, the guy has a job which could help him pay for the cost of hospitalization. Another might say however, that it is ironic that the worker spent his strength and energies working to earn money and enjoy life, only to find out in the end that he has to spend what he earned through work to regain his health in the hospital bed.
Unexpected things do come our way in life. Work—the positive outlook of it, the useful learning it could contribute in the worker, the financial and material earnings it could provide—could sometimes be a useful and dependable means of preparing ourselves for such surprises in life. On the other hand, the negative perspective on work—an abusive attitude towards it, and an excessive dependence on it and its “fruits” which could make the worker forget or ignore the Source, Giver and Lord of work—could bring the worker into events which he would wished he were prepared to face or handle.
By looking at work with the eyes of faith and working with the awareness of the presence of Jesus, one could be better prepared to encounter any surprising events in life, including that of the unexpected moment of meeting one’s Creator face to face. Work well done—not merely for the individual’s satisfaction but also for the good and welfare of others and for the glory of the Almighty—could be the believer’s passport to God’s kingdom and his assurance of everlasting life and happiness.
This issue of preparing
By Teresa R. Tunay, OCDS
Two of the things that prod me on to work hard in media are: one the promotion of truth and two, the situation of our marginalized kababayans. Not so much those who work in air-conditioned offices, who never get their hands soiled in labor, who are well-fed or who collect more than adequate paychecks come payday, as those with little or no schooling and who can hardly make both ends meet. They toil day and night at jobs no one would envy them for, not minding their sweat and the grime in their hands, hardly knowing or caring how they contribute to the country’s economy or progress. Scavengers are one of them; part-time workers and part-time bums; so are self-taught fix-it-all handymen who leave your home appliances or systems in a worse state than when they find it—you know the kind I’m referring to.
We have so many of them in our country—a daunting number in proportion to the compassionate few who devote their lives to improving the lot of these Filipinos. Sometimes, when I reflect on gospel stories like this one for today, I surmise that the most I can do for them is to tell the truth about their situation as I see it. And never mind “results”—the poor have been there since time immemoriam and will be there—it seems—forever and ever ad infinitum. Still with hope I go on, commiserating with the marginalized as much as is demanded by my profession in the pursuit of truth.
The truth is, we have millions of laboring kababayans who have never heard of the word of God, let alone ponder it. It would be cruel to tell them to prepare for the unexpected hour the Son of Man will come, for sudden disaster or death, when their ignorance is already a disaster and their poverty, a living death.
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