Leave it to Jesus
Years ago as a high school teacher, I was pressed into service to supervise the stage crew for the school musical, “Anything Goes.” We were in the basement constructing the set—an ocean liner—and blissfully unaware that the production was really, really bad. On one fateful afternoon, the director had a nervous breakdown and a minor, but important actor got appendicitis. I was sprung from the cellar to save the day, so I commandeered a kid to replace the appendicitis victim and told him: “You don’t need to know what happened before, and you don’t need to know what happens next, just play your part and it will be fine.” And he did and it was.
Isn’t this a bit like the advice Jesus gives in today’s gospel—the play is falling apart, it looks like the director has been escorted off the property, and it’s hard to locate the hero or know where the story is going to end up! Doesn’t matter. Trust. Just get out there and do your bit. Stand up straight. Be alert. No matter what the trouble is, you’ll be fine; you’ll be rewarded. Just trust—and do it this way.
Catholics tend not to get caught up in the fireworks of end-of-the-world predictions. We are like actors in a very real drama. We don’t know much at all about the play, whether we’re in the first act or the last act, or even whether the characters around us have major or minor roles. But we believe the plot will work out, it will be fulfilled, even if our limited understanding right now obscures it. So in these first days of Advent, take a deep breath. Believe Jesus, and let your soul catch up to you.
~by Reverend James A. Field