Judges 4, 1st Thessalonians 5, Matthew 25
‘Be ready!’ says today’s gospel. According to today’s first reading, disaster would ensue for Israel if there was any move away from an exclusive faith in their God. Many people in today’s Israel would agree, but there might be less agreement about the meaning of that exclusive faith.
God (according to Paul Tillich) can be defined in two ways: as the ground of our being, and the as object of our ultimate concern. When our ultimate concern really is the ground of our being, we are in a true relationship with God. When our ultimate concern is directed away from the ground of our being, we are tending towards idolatry.
Remembrance is always partly and act of repentance, and the root of our need for repentance on this occasion, as on many others, is the fact that nations can easily become ultimately concerned with nothing greater than themselves, with either laughable or destructive results.
St Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, written in a very different situation from that which faced Joshua, encourages the faithful with an assurance that their lives are ultimately safe in God’s hands. Could it be a way of saying that, whether or not we are ultimately concerned with the ground of our being, God is ultimately concerned with us? The call of today’s gospel is to readiness for the kingdom that God is offering.
