Be Prepared!

Deacon Mark Mueller

Homily Holy Redeemer by the Sea • Sermon • Submitted 6 months ago • Presented 6 months ago

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Every single person who bears the title, Christian, is also called to maintain spiritual readiness. Why? Because the practice of virtue, being ready, takes effort.

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A Homily on Wednesday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time - Lectionary: 475

Rom 6:12-18, Ps 124:1b-3, 4-6, 7-8, and Lk 12:39-48

By Deacon Mark Mueller

In 1907, Robert Baden-Powell, an English soldier and founder of Scouting, devised the Scout motto: Be Prepared. It is the motto for both the boy and girl scouts. Upon hearing the Scout motto, someone asked Robert Baden-Powell the inevitable follow-up question. “Prepared for what?” In Scouting for Boys, Baden-Powell wrote that to Be Prepared means “you are always in a state of readiness in mind and body to do your duty.” In the Girl Scout Handbook it states that, to be prepared, “A Girl Scout is ready to help out wherever she is needed. Willingness to serve is not enough; you must know how to do the job well, even in an emergency.” After more than a century, preparedness is still the cornerstone of Scouting.

To be prepared, Boy and Girl Scouts build physical and spiritual readiness. In building physical readiness, scouts learn first aid, physical and mental fitness, the ability to survive in austere conditions and the importance of teamwork to get things done. In building spiritual readiness, scouts learn the importance of helping others, the fact that they need the help of a higher power to do so, and the need to sacrifice self that good may be done. In fact, the scouting promise is, “to do a good turn daily.” Though spiritual readiness is often under attack by those who would like to take God out of scouting. The devil will use any means to attack the good, it remains largely intact to this point. Why? Because we know that down deep inside ourselves, that it is spiritual readiness primarily that fuels everything else.

The Army, after more than two decades of continuous conflict, recognized the importance of Spiritual Readiness. After dealing with increasing suicides, depression, post traumatic stress and the atrocities of incidents like Abu Garib, the Army recognized the need to be both physically and spiritually fit. The Army defined having a strong spiritual core as essential. Field Manual 7-22, titled Holistic Health and Fitness, states that a strong spiritual core means having,

“a sense of connection that gives meaning and purpose to a person’s life.” It helps Soldiers develop “the personal qualities” they need in “times of stress, hardship, and tragedy,” and includes knowing “one’s purpose, core values, beliefs, identity and life vision…which define the essence of a person,”

Every single person who bears the title, Christian, is also called to maintain spiritual readiness. Why? Because the practice of virtue, being ready, takes effort. Being prepared is so important that Jesus addresses it directly in the Gospel today,

“…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."

St Gregory of Nyssa defines virtue as the,

“habitual and firm disposition to do the good. [Virtue] allows the person not only to perform good acts, but to give the best of himself. … The goal of a virtuous life is to become like God.” (St. Gregory of Nyssa, De beatitudinibus, 1)

We must decide to put on virtue, the habitual (a constant effort) and a firm decision to set aside sin so that we can do the good God calls us to do as what St Paul describes in the first reading as weapons of righteousness. He writes to the Romans,

“do not present the parts of your bodies to sin as weapons for wickedness, but present yourselves to God as raised from the dead to life and the parts of your bodies to God as weapons for righteousness.”

Is being a weapon of righteousness, having a habitual and firm disposition to practice virtue, easy? No. The Church teaches us that

It is not easy for man, wounded by sin, to maintain moral balance. Christ’s gift of salvation offers us the grace necessary to persevere in the pursuit of the virtues. Everyone should always [pray] for this grace of light and strength, frequent the sacraments, cooperate with the Holy Spirit, and follow his calls to love what is good and shun evil. (CCC 1811)

We need a constant infusion of grace to practice virtue. Today, Amy and Jim having received the grace of Baptism, now ask to receive Confirmation and First Communion. Through the grace of Confirmation, God gives us the strength to proclaim the Gospel in word and deed. In the Eucharist, God gives us Himself, His Real Presence pulsing through every cell in our body, to enable us to look beyond all that pulls us toward fear, laziness, and sin and to persevere in doing God’s will. Amy and Jim recognize they need the help of God’s grace and desire to draw on it as God’s gift through the Church. For every Catholic, God gives us everything we need through the Sacraments, we simply need to habitually receive them and then make the firm decision every day, to practice virtue, to be spiritual ready, to be prepared for we do not know when the Master will return and we must account for how we have lived in His grace. As Jesus reminds us,

Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.

God has given us Himself, now is the time to live in virtue. Then we can rejoice with the Psalmist today in praying,

We were rescued like a bird from the fowlers' snare; Broken was the snare, and we were freed. Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.