Lord, is this parable meant for us or for everyone?

23 OCTOBER (Lk 12,39-48)

The Scripture is made of many sudden moments, in which the Lord bursts into our history and upsets it. In an instant you are in time and in a moment in eternity. In the evening you are in a place and the day after you are was catapulted into another. Today, you are sure of victory and tomorrow you run away because you are defeated without any hope. In history the Lord truly comes also when we do not imagine it. Suddenness is his strength.

That night the Lord said to Gideon, “Go, descend on the camp, for I have delivered it up to you. If you are afraid to attack, go down to the camp with your aide Purah. When you hear what they are saying, you will have the courage to descend on the camp.” So he went down with his aide Purah to the outposts of the camp. The Midianites, Amalekites, and all the Kedemites lay in the valley, as numerous as locusts. Nor could their camels be counted, for these were as many as the sands on the seashore. When Gideon arrived, one man was telling another about a dream. “I had a dream,” he said, “that a round loaf of barley bread was rolling into the camp of Midian. It came to our tent and struck it, and as it fell it turned the tent upside down.” “This can only be the sword of the Israelite Gideon, son of Joash,” the other replied. “God has delivered Midian and all the camp into his power.” When Gideon heard the description and explanation of the dream, he prostrated himself. Then returning to the camp of Israel, he said, “Arise, for the Lord has delivered the camp of Midian into your power.”

He divided the three hundred men into three companies, and provided them all with horns and with empty jars and torches inside the jars. “Watch me and follow my lead,” he told them. “I shall go to the edge of the camp, and as I do, you must do also. When I and those with me blow horns, you too must blow horns all around the camp and cry out, ‘For the Lord and for Gideon!'” So Gideon and the hundred men who were with him came to the edge of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch, just after the posting of the guards. They blew the horns and broke the jars they were holding. All three companies blew horns and broke their jars. They held the torches in their left hands, and in their right the horns they were blowing, and cried out, “A sword for the Lord and Gideon!” They all remained standing in place around the camp, while the whole camp fell to running and shouting and fleeing.But the three hundred men kept blowing the horns, and throughout the camp the Lord set the sword of one against another. The army fled as far as Beth-shittah in the direction of Zarethan, near the border of Abel-meholah at Tabbath (Judges 7,0-22).

A well seasoned army bases its security in its force. No one can trample it. It rests assured. It does not fear any misfortune. Suddenly the Lord comes and makes vain all its certainties. Only God is the safety of a man and in God alone, never outside of Him. The safety of a man is ever abiding in the will of his Lord and God. It is walking in His will, revealed in his Law. If a man stands outside the will of his God, for Him there is no safety either for the things of time and nor for his eternity. He will be overtaken by history and precipitated into eternal perdition. Today, this truth is completely denied, forgotten and erased.

Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” Then Peter said, “Lord, is this parable meant for us or for everyone?” And the Lord replied, “Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward whom the master will put in charge of his servants to distribute (the) food allowance at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds doing so. Truly, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property. But if that servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants, to eat and drink and get drunk, then that servant’s master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely and assign him a place with the unfaithful. That servant who knew his master’s will but did not make preparations nor act in accord with his will shall be beaten severely; and the servant who was ignorant of his master’s will but acted in a way deserving of a severe beating shall be beaten only lightly. Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints help us to walk in the truth according to the Word. Our salvation in time and eternity demands it.