Being Prepared for our Bridegroom's Coming

This week we lost one of our Sisters who was very much alive and loved. She was fully employed at a nearby parish as a Pastoral Associate in charge of the sick and infirm of the parish. She visited very parishioners who was hospitalized and or sick at home. She was at a family’s side when they were dealing with the trauma of a terminal illness or dealing with chronic diseases.  Persons to whom she ministered describe her with much gratitude, as she personified the compassion and mercy of God for them. Suddenly this past Sunday, while dining out with one of her friends, a Sister celebrating her 97^th birthday, she experienced a sudden pain in her head. She died less than 24 hours later from a brain bleed. 

All week long, the Gospels have warned d us to be ready because, “at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come” (Luke 12: 40)—today’s Gospel. Yesterday, Jesus said to us: “Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return…, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival” (Luke 12: 35). And the strongest message of all was given to us in Monday’s Gospel, Luke 12: 16-21, which told the story of the “rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest,” so great that he wondered what to do with his abundance.  “This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, ‘Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry.”  God says to him and to those of us accumulating riches only for this world and neglecting those that last into eternity:  “You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?”  Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself [herself] but is not rich in what matters to God.”
 
The Sister who died Monday morning was “rich in what matters to God.”  What about you and me? Are we building up only earthly riches and not those of heaven?