19th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle C

Luke 12:32-48

“Much will be required of the person entrusted with much and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”  (Luke 12:48b) 

To follow Christ is an invitation to risk. From a bystander’s perspective, Christianity might appear to be a safe fallback—something intended to be a bandage to get through hard times. But anyone who has truly met Christ and committed their life to following Him knows a reality quite different.  

As we journey along the road of falling more deeply in love with Christ, more is asked of us. We have to come face-to-face with our attachments to things that are not of Him. We have to be willing to face the rejection and loneliness that comes with choosing Him and Him alone. We will inevitably find ourselves knee-deep in the choice of surrender which means forsaking life lived for ourselves for a life lived in the service of leading others to Him.  

The more Christ reveals Himself to us, and the more we allow that reality to penetrate our daily lives and who we are, the more we lose what the world has to offer.  

But when we give, and continue to give the more asked of us, if our eyes are focused on Jesus we discover that giving, while sometimes demanding, is graced with so much beauty. For He asks much, but He gives everything else in return.  

And that everything is wrapped deep in his heart of love which is continually beating for us. It’s as if the worldly pulls which once held so much appeal completely lose their color in light of the something more our hearts were truly made for.  

Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel are a powerful reminder that with Christ all that we risk, all that we lose, all that we have to carry is worth it.  

It’s the servants whom the master comes home to find ready that He “proceed[s] to wait on.”  When He comes home and finds you ready, how does He wait on you? How does He love on you? The more He asks of you to give—both in material ways and of your very self—the more glorious will be the joy when He looks at you and speaks those words your soul is aching to hear: “Well done good and faithful servant.”