Be Alert

The last few weeks of the liturgical year are always difficult for me. The end of the long, long stretch until Advent. Thirty-four weeks of waiting around. We’ve been going through the parables for a while. There’s increasing urgency in the readings. Sheep and goats and virgins’ lamps. Stay awake, get right with God, for he’s coming any moment. It’s true, I know, but I don’t feel the urgency. It starts to sounds like a Baptist altar call. I don’t respond to threats of hell.

But I realize that the problem is me (of course).

The message is urgent, but I bop along in my same routine. Recently I was talking about evangelization with some other people, and how St. Catherine of Sienna prayed for the salvation of others’ souls. And I just don’t. I pray for others and their struggles, but I rarely outright pray for the salvation of their soul. It doesn’t seem like a pressing matter.

And I realized other’s salvation doesn’t seem pressing because mine doesn’t either. I don’t treat my soul’s care with the urgency that I should. I get in routines. I don’t pray. I let weeks pass without confession. I don’t do anything particularly bad, but I don’t do anything particularly good either. I’m waiting out the weeks. I’m daydreaming while listening to the call to stay awake.

The new year begins, and the urgency is still there; it all loops back. He comes to save, in regency and in a manger. The risen king and the incarnate babe. Stay awake, be alert. He is coming. Perhaps the colors and candles will shake me from my slothfulness.