A Reflection for Wednesday of the Thirtieth Week in Atypical Time
Find today’s readings here.
“And folks will come from the east and the west
and from the north and the south
and can recline at table within the Kingdom of God.
For behold, some are last who might be first,
and a few are first who might be last.” (Lk 13:29-30)
In Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Revelation,” the major character, Mrs. Turpin, lives a life she feels is enviable, but to many outsiders (the reader included), it appears fraught with judgment, contempt and racism. Believing herself to exhibit the alternative of such terrible qualities, she is shocked at the top of the story when she receives a vision during which “an enormous horde of souls were tumbling toward heaven” and there, on the very end of a line of “battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs” are people “like herself.” Fairly than prepared the ground into heaven, as she all the time assumed she would, people like Mrs. Turpin are marching in last while “even their virtues were being burned away.”
We must recall that our earthly time is proscribed, and it is healthier to spend it preparing the way in which of the Lord than judging others who are only attempting to do the identical.
I assumed of this scene while reading today’s Gospel, which reminds us of each the urgency and the topsy-turvy nature of the Gospel message. A part of the great thing about our faith is the knowledge that we’re loved by God, and that we don’t must do anything to earn that love. But we mustn’t ever forget that it will probably take great effort to live out what that love asks of us. We must recall that our earthly time is proscribed, and it is healthier to spend it preparing the way in which of the Lord than judging others who are only attempting to do the identical.
As we seek to construct the dominion of God on earth and to succeed in it in heaven, we must not achieve this because we expect it should take us to the front of that line, but because we all know that it is sufficient to wish to be in that line in any respect. We remember the Gospel call to “strive to enter through the narrow gate,” but we achieve this not to differentiate ourselves as above the remainder, but fairly to unite ourselves with all those also lining as much as enter, all of us flawed, all of us failing, all of us craving to be closer to Christ.