NOTES for Luk 12:35-38

The call to keep watch is repeated very often in the Gospel. Among other reasons, because always being on alert, always remembering why and how we live, is unbearable labor. It is unbearable because we live in time, but we must keep watch in expectation of eternity.

Having met God, we are so blinded by Him that at first such frequent reminders of our changeability seem ridiculous to us. But time passes, and it becomes harder and harder to preserve that inner tension of the first days of faith. Like the first Christians, we suddenly understand that we are waiting impatiently for the Second Coming, but no longer for a day or two; we are waiting ten or twenty years, and who knows how many more decades of difficult and frightening life will be needed before we wait for Him. And He keeps saying: "Keep watch, do not relax, be ready. Above all, be ready."

How hard it is to be ready. Every day to give an account to oneself that one must wait for Him to come, and not for something else. How much one would like to put things in order once and for all. But even if one stops moving and sits absolutely still, there will be no disorder, but one will become covered with dust. And day after day, in expectation of Christ's coming, one will still have to put things in order, wipe off the dust, wash the floors, and wait until He comes.