Found So Doing
There is something wonderfully undramatic about the servant whom Jesus praises this morning.
He is not standing on a hill scanning the horizon. He is not calculating the hour of his master’s return. He is not announcing that the end is near.
He is giving people their breakfast.
Christ’s faithful steward is simply found doing what he was given to do.
Most of our lives are made of such things: opening the shop, making the coffee, answering the letter, checking the drawing, packing the lunch, keeping the appointment, saying the prayer. We imagine that faithfulness ought to feel heroic. Usually it feels remarkably like Wednesday morning.
Perhaps that is precisely where Christ means to find us.
OPENING VERSE
Lord, open my lips.
And my mouth shall declare thy praise.
INVITATORY
Antiphon: Come, let us adore the Lord, for he made us.
Psalm 94 (95)
Come let us praise the Lord with joy:
let us joyfully sing to God our saviour.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving;
and make a joyful noise to him with psalms.
For the Lord is a great God,
and a great king above all gods.
For in his hand are all the ends of the earth:
and the heights of the mountains are his.
For the sea is his, and he made it:
and his hands formed the dry land.
Come let us adore and fall down:
and weep before the Lord that made us.
For he is the Lord our God:
and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.
Today if you shall hear his voice,
harden not your hearts:
As in the provocation, according to the day of temptation in the wilderness:
where your fathers tempted me, they proved me, and saw my works.
Forty years long was I offended with that generation,
and I said: These always err in heart.
And these men have not known my ways:
so I swore in my wrath that they shall not enter into my rest.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: Come, let us adore the Lord, for he made us.
PSALMODY
Psalm 35 (36)
Antiphon: O Lord, in thy light we shall see light.
The unjust hath said within himself, that he would sin:
there is no fear of God before his eyes.
For in his sight he hath done deceitfully,
that his iniquity may be found unto hatred.
The words of his mouth are iniquity and guile:
he would not understand that he might do well.
He hath devised iniquity on his bed,
he hath set himself on every way that is not good:
but evil he hath not hated.
O Lord, thy mercy is in heaven,
and thy truth reacheth even to the clouds.
Thy justice is as the mountains of God:
thy judgments are a great deep.
Men and beasts thou wilt preserve, O Lord:
O how hast thou multiplied thy mercy, O God!
But the children of men
shall put their trust under the covert of thy wings.
They shall be inebriated with the plenty of thy house;
and thou shalt make them drink of the torrent of thy pleasure.
For with thee is the fountain of life;
and in thy light we shall see light.
Extend thy mercy to them that know thee,
and thy justice to them that are right in heart.
Let not the foot of pride come to me,
and let not the hand of the sinner move me.
There the workers of iniquity are fallen:
they are cast out, and could not stand.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: O Lord, in thy light we shall see light.
Canticle — Judith 16
Antiphon: O God, thou art great and glorious; we marvel at thy power.
Begin ye to the Lord with timbrels,
sing ye to the Lord with cymbals,
tune unto him a new psalm,
extol and call upon his name.
The Lord putteth an end to wars,
the Lord is his name.
Let us sing a hymn to the Lord,
let us sing a new hymn to our God.
O Adonai, Lord, great art thou,
and glorious in thy power,
and no one can overcome thee.
Let all thy creatures serve thee:
because thou hast spoken, and they were made:
Thou didst send forth thy spirit, and they were created,
and there is no one that can resist thy voice.
The mountains shall be moved from the foundations with the waters:
the rocks shall melt as wax before thy face.
But they that fear thee
shall be great with thee in all things.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: O God, thou art great and glorious; we marvel at thy power.
Psalm 46 (47)
Antiphon: Rejoice in the presence of God with hymns of praise.
O clap your hands, all ye nations:
shout unto God with the voice of joy,
For the Lord is high, terrible:
a great king over all the earth.
He hath subdued the people under us;
and the nations under our feet.
He hath chosen for us his inheritance,
the beauty of Jacob which he hath loved.
God is ascended with jubilee,
and the Lord with the sound of trumpet.
Sing praises to our God, sing ye:
sing praises to our king, sing ye.
For God is the king of all the earth:
sing ye wisely.
God shall reign over the nations:
God sitteth on his holy throne.
The princes of the people are gathered together,
with the God of Abraham:
For the strong gods of the earth
are exceedingly exalted.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: Rejoice in the presence of God with hymns of praise.
SHORT READING
Tobias 4
See thou never do to another what thou wouldst hate to have done to thee by another.
Eat thy bread with the hungry and the needy, and with thy garments cover the naked.
Seek counsel always of a wise man.
Bless God at all times: and desire of him to direct thy ways, and that all thy counsels may abide in him.
SHORT RESPONSORY
Incline my heart according to thy will, O God.
Incline my heart according to thy will, O God.
Make straight my steps upon thy path.
According to thy will, O God.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
Incline my heart according to thy will, O God.
GOSPEL OF THE DAY
Luke 12:39–48
At that time, Jesus said to his disciples:
But this know ye, that if the householder did know at what hour the thief would come, he would surely watch and would not suffer his house to be broken open.
Be you then also ready: for at what hour you think not the Son of man will come.
And Peter said to him: Lord, dost thou speak this parable to us, or likewise to all?
And the Lord said: Who thinkest thou is the faithful and wise steward, whom his lord setteth over his family, to give them their measure of wheat in due season?
Blessed is that servant whom, when his lord shall come, he shall find so doing.
Verily I say to you, he will set him over all that he possesseth.
But if that servant shall say in his heart: My lord is long a coming; and shall begin to strike the menservants and maidservants, and to eat and to drink and be drunk:
The lord of that servant will come in the day that he hopeth not, and at the hour that he knoweth not: and shall separate him and shall appoint him his portion with unbelievers.
And that servant who knew the will of his lord and prepared not himself and did not according to his will shall be beaten with many stripes.
But he that knew not and did things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with few stripes.
And unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required: and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more.
BENEDICTUS
Antiphon: Blessed is that servant whom his lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing.
Canticle of Zachary — Luke 1:68–79
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel;
because he hath visited and wrought the redemption of his people:
And hath raised up an horn of salvation to us,
in the house of David his servant:
As he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets,
who are from the beginning:
Salvation from our enemies,
and from the hand of all that hate us:
To perform mercy to our fathers,
and to remember his holy testament,
The oath, which he swore to Abraham our father,
that he would grant to us,
That being delivered from the hand of our enemies,
we may serve him without fear,
In holiness and justice before him,
all our days.
And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest:
for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways:
To give knowledge of salvation to his people,
unto the remission of their sins:
Through the bowels of the mercy of our God,
in which the Orient from on high hath visited us:
To enlighten them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death:
to direct our feet into the way of peace.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: Blessed is that servant whom his lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing.
INTERCESSIONS
Christ has entrusted to each of us people to love, work to accomplish, and gifts to use. Let us ask him for the grace to be faithful in the ordinary duties of this day.
Lord, find us faithful when thou comest.
For the Church, that she may faithfully distribute the bread of truth and the Bread of Life to all who hunger.
Lord, find us faithful when thou comest.
For bishops, priests, deacons, religious, missionaries, and all who have been entrusted with the care of souls, that authority may always become service.
Lord, find us faithful when thou comest.
For those entrusted with public office, businesses, schools, workshops, farms, hospitals, and homes, that they may remember that responsibility is a trust and not a possession.
Lord, find us faithful when thou comest.
For us in our work today: give us patience with the unfinished task, honesty in the hidden task, courage in the difficult task, and gratitude for the useful task.
Lord, find us faithful when thou comest.
For our families and friends, especially those whose daily acts of love are so ordinary that they are easily overlooked.
Lord, find us faithful when thou comest.
For those who are weary of responsibilities they did not choose, especially caregivers, parents, the lonely, the sick, and those carrying burdens known only to thee.
Lord, find us faithful when thou comest.
For those who have died, that having finished their earthly labor they may enter into the joy of their Lord.
Lord, find us faithful when thou comest.
And for ourselves: keep us from waiting for a grander calling while neglecting the good that lies directly before us.
Lord, find us faithful when thou comest.
OUR FATHER
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Amen.
CONCLUDING PRAYER
Almighty and eternal God,
thou hast entrusted to each of us gifts to use,
duties to perform,
and neighbors to serve.
Keep us watchful without fear,
diligent without anxiety,
and faithful in the small things placed before us.
May we neither bury thy gifts through timidity
nor misuse them through pride,
but spend ourselves gladly in thy service,
so that whenever Christ our Lord shall come,
he may find us doing the work of love.
Through the same Christ our Lord.
Amen.
BLESSING
May the Lord bless us,
protect us from all evil,
and bring us to everlasting life.
Amen.
THE PARADOX OF THE DAY
The best way to be ready for the end of the world is to do faithfully the next ordinary thing.
CHESTERTON FOR THE MORNING
“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”
— G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World, Part IV, Chapter XIV, “Folly and Female Education”
Chesterton did not mean that good things deserve careless work. He meant almost the opposite. Some things are too important to be left only to experts. They must be attempted by ordinary people who love them, even when those people cannot perform them perfectly.
That is a surprisingly good sentence to carry into today’s Gospel.
A CHESTERTONIAN MEDITATION
The Man Who Was Still Making Breakfast
There is a particular kind of temptation that arrives on Wednesday morning.
Monday can be attacked. Friday can be anticipated. Sunday can be sanctified.
But Wednesday merely sits there.
The coffee pot has to be filled again. The same road has to be driven. There are dishes in the sink that were quite certainly washed only yesterday. The inbox has somehow reproduced during the night. Something in the house squeaks. Something at work is late. Someone needs an answer.
And nobody is likely to write an epic poem about any of it.
This is unfortunate, because our Lord seems rather fond of Wednesday.
Consider the hero of today’s Gospel.
Jesus asks us to imagine a steward whose master has gone away. The steward has been put in charge of the household. His great responsibility is described with almost comic plainness: he is to give the household its proper measure of wheat at the proper time.
That is all.
No dragons.
No armies.
No thunderbolt from heaven.
Dinner at six.
And when the master unexpectedly returns, Christ says:
“Blessed is that servant whom, when his lord shall come, he shall find so doing.”
So doing.
There may be no more comforting description of holiness in the Gospel.
The servant is not found delivering a speech about stewardship. He has not drawn a chart predicting his master’s arrival. He is not standing at the gate looking religious.
He is doing his job.
Christianity has always contained this glorious collision between the immense and the ordinary.
The Son of God enters history, and somebody has to wrap him in swaddling clothes.
The Word becomes flesh, and someone has to cook supper.
The apostles receive the Great Commission, and before long the Church discovers that widows must be fed and collections must be organized.
The kingdom of heaven arrives amid bread, lamps, coins, fishing nets, vineyards, seeds, weddings, wages, debts, sheep, and household servants.
We keep expecting God to speak in abstractions.
God keeps pointing at furniture.
This is one reason Chesterton’s strange remark about doing things badly is more serious than it first appears.
“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”
Taken by itself, it sounds like a magnificent motto for the incompetent.
It is not.
Chesterton was defending the amateur—not the careless man, but the ordinary man who does something because it belongs to being human rather than because he possesses a certificate proving expertise in it.
A mother should sing to her child even if she would never be admitted to the opera.
A father should play catch even if no professional club is waiting to sign him.
Friends should cook for one another even if the sauce would alarm a French chef.
People should grow tomatoes, tell stories, paint pictures, repair chairs, teach children, sing hymns and say prayers even when other people could technically do these things better.
Because some things cease to be fully human when we decide that only professionals may do them.
And faithfulness is one of them.
There is no professional class of people hired to be faithful on our behalf.
Nobody can love your wife for you.
Nobody can be your child’s father for you.
Nobody can forgive your enemy for you.
Nobody can say your prayers for you in the sense that excuses you from saying them yourself.
Nobody can live the particular Wednesday that has been handed to you.
That is your stewardship.
And here the Gospel becomes uncomfortable.
“Unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required.”
We normally hear those words and think of spectacular gifts.
Great wealth. Great intelligence. Great authority. Great talent.
Certainly they apply there.
But most of what has been given to us does not look spectacular because we have grown accustomed to possessing it.
A house key.
A wedding ring.
A telephone number belonging to someone who would be glad to hear our voice.
A skill learned over forty years.
A child who still asks our advice.
A neighbor.
A parish.
A workshop.
A morning.
A body that got out of bed today.
A mind capable of remembering yesterday.
Another chance to say, “I’m sorry.”
Another chance to say, “I love you.”
Another chance to begin.
We call these ordinary things because they happen repeatedly.
But repetition is not proof that something is ordinary.
The sun has risen rather often.
Nobody has yet managed to make it commonplace.
This is where watchfulness becomes quite different from nervousness.
Christ does not tell the steward to spend his life staring anxiously toward the road. Indeed, the good servant seems almost unconcerned with the master’s timetable.
He is ready precisely because he is busy.
The bad servant is the one obsessed with the delay.
“My lord is long a coming.”
Once he convinces himself that the master is absent, everything changes. Responsibility becomes possession. Authority becomes domination. Appetite becomes law.
He forgets the essential fact of stewardship:
The house is not his.
Neither is ours.
Our possessions are not finally ours.
Our talents are not finally ours.
Our time is certainly not ours; none of us knows how much remains in the account.
Even the people we love are not possessions delivered into our hands. They are persons entrusted to our love for a little while.
And so Christianity makes the astonishing claim that the proper response to the uncertainty of life is not panic.
It is gratitude.
We do not know when the Master will return.
Very well.
Put the kettle on.
Feed the children.
Finish the drawing.
Visit the sick friend.
Make the telephone call.
Correct the mistake.
Sweep the floor.
Say Morning Prayer.
Do the work in front of you.
Do it well if you can.
Do it badly if badly is the best you can honestly manage today.
But do the thing worth doing.
There is a dangerous perfectionism that can disguise itself as seriousness. It whispers that if we cannot do something magnificently, we ought to wait until conditions improve.
We will pray when we can concentrate properly.
We will invite the lonely person to dinner when the house is cleaner.
We will write the story when we have enough time.
We will reconcile with the relative when we have found exactly the right words.
We will serve God when we have finally become the sort of person who serves God impressively.
And the years pass.
Chesterton laughs at this because Christianity laughs at it.
God has always accomplished astonishing things with amateurs.
Peter was not a professional pope when Christ called him. He was a fisherman who would shortly demonstrate a remarkable capacity for misunderstanding instructions.
The apostles were entrusted with the Church before any of them had acquired an advanced degree in ecclesiastical administration.
The Blessed Virgin did not present Gabriel with a résumé demonstrating previous experience as Mother of God.
The saints did not become saints because they were already qualified.
They became saints because, when grace arrived, they said yes and began.
Badly sometimes.
Fearfully sometimes.
With failures, reversals, confessions and second attempts.
But they began.
This morning’s steward has no idea when his lord will appear at the door.
Perhaps that is why he is free.
He cannot manage the future.
He can only be faithful to the present.
There is bread to distribute.
There are people to feed.
There is work to be done.
And somewhere beyond the horizon, the Master is coming home.
Perhaps the holiest thing we can ask this morning is not that Christ find us impressive.
Only that he find us so doing.
Lord Jesus Christ,
give us grace to be faithful in the thing before us.
When the work seems too small, remind us whose work it is.
When we cannot do it perfectly, keep us from refusing to do it at all.
And whenever thou comest,
may thou find us so doing.
Chesterton Radio