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APRIL 11
KEEPING WATCH
“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know at what hour your Lord
will come (ἔρχεται).” (Mt 24: 42)
This passage, in which Christ tells me to “keep watch,” or “pay attention,”
is usually translated as an admonition about the future, because we do
not know when the Lord “will come” at His final “coming.” However, here
Christ actually uses the present tense; He says, to be precise, that we
don’t know when He “comes” (ἔρχεται).
The Lord “comes” to me in unexpected ways; in moments of solitude and
through other people, both friends and strangers, created in His image,
and through all creation, when I pay attention. Nowadays it is easy not
to pay attention, when we are engrossed in our phones, oblivious to our
physical surroundings so much of the time. We can be oblivious to the
others riding with us in the train, or in the elevator, or even to those
sitting with us at the dinner-table. Even when we’re alone, walking in the
park or waiting for a friend at a café, we can easily escape the moment of
solitude to check the ever-present phone.
Today let me take time to be more present, to “keep watch” for how my
Lord comes to me in my immediate surroundings, be it in the spring
flowers, the fresh foliage of the trees, or in the various people I encounter.
Let Him be present to me, and I to Him, in the places and people He
reveals to me today.
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