From the responsorial psalm: “Open my eyes, that I may consider the wonders of your law. Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!”
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke (Lk 17:26-37)
“As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man; they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Similarly, as it was in the days of Lot: they were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building; on the day when Lot left Sodom, fire and brimstone rained from the sky to destroy them all. So it will be on the day the Son of Man is revealed.”
Jesus continues to tell the disciples about the coming of God’s kingdom—that it is already among them and is yet to come in the final judgment. He stresses constant vigilance for that day when one who is in the field “must not return to what was left behind.” Similar to what we hear in today’s psalm, Jesus asks the disciples to open their eyes to the awesome majesty of the coming of God’s kingdom in its full glory. The particular way that Jesus guides the disciples rests on salvation history in his retelling of the story of Noah and the wife of Lot, who became a pillar of salt as she looked back at Sodom, a place of sinfulness and corruption. Jesus invites us to turn our eyes on the kingdom of God already present and to be vigilant for the return of Christ and the final judgment.
Father in heaven, you see what I have before me today and know my desire to make the best of your gifts of time and opportunity. Amid the day’s activities, let me not forget that all of these things I am attached to can suddenly be taken from me. All that I see and can respond to means nothing unless I respond in love to the love with which you first loved us. As John says in the first reading, if I walk according to your commandment to love one another, I remain in Christ’s teaching, the teaching of the Father and the Son. Lord, take the little faith that I have and bless me as I seek to do all that you command.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
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