Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XII). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Monica (387), the mother of Saint Augustine of Hippo.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Matthew 24: 42-51 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 42 Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
45 ‘Who then is the faithful and wise slave, whom his master has put in charge of his household, to give the other slaves their allowance of food at the proper time? 46 Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. 47 Truly I tell you, he will put that one in charge of all his possessions. 48 But if that wicked slave says to himself, “My master is delayed”, 49 and he begins to beat his fellow-slaves, and eats and drinks with drunkards, 50 the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour that he does not know. 51 He will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
Today’s Reflections:
We are entering the final phase of weekday readings in Saint Matthew, which conclude on Saturday (29 August 2026). We are going to read selected readings from chapters 24 and 25 that form what is known as the ‘Eschatological Discourse’. This is the fifth and final discourse, each of which is a collection of the teachings of Jesus and they are a feature of Saint Matthew’s Gospel. This discourse is concerned with the end of all things, and the second and final coming of Christ to bring all things together.
The earlier part of chapter 24 includes the foretelling of the destruction of Jerusalem, an event that for the Jews of the time, including those who had converted to Christianity, must have seemed like the end of the world.
The early Christians had expected to see the Second Coming in their lifetime and the sacking of Jerusalem and the sacrilegious destruction of the Temple must have seemed the certain signs of the ἔσχατον (eschaton, ‘last thing’). But by the time Saint Matthew’s Gospel was written or in circulation, that was already at least 15 years in the past. The end, although certain to happen, did not seem any more quite so imminent.
Saint Matthew includes as part of the discourse a number of Parousia (παρουσία) or final coming parables. Following a pattern in other parts of this gospel, they are seven in number. We have two short ones in today’s reading. Both consist of an exhortation for readiness to welcome the final coming of the Lord.
In the first we should be as alert in watching for the coming of the Lord as a householder would be to prevent his house being broken into and robbed. Like a thief, Jesus will come when we least expect him.
In the second parable, Jesus compares us to a servant who has been put in charge of the house while the master is away. This may refer to the community leaders in Saint Matthew’s church and, by extension, to leaders of communities everywhere. It will be well for that servant when the master unexpectedly returns and finds his servant diligently doing his job.
Being burgled at night is a frightening and a traumatic experience for anyone who has suffered it.
It is one thing to come home from a day’s work, or from a holiday, to find your house has been broken into. It is another to wake up and realise that as you were sleeping a thief has broken into your home, and is downstairs or in the next room.
It happened to me once, in a house I was living in, in south Dublin.
It was in the days before mobile ’phones and cordless ’phones. I had been working late the night before in The Irish Times and came downstairs to answer a mid-morning ’phone call.
Unknown to me, the thieves were in the next room, having already gone through the kitchen. They were in there, having made themselves something to drink, had cut the lead to the video recorder, and were squatting on the floor, armed with the ‘kitchen devil,’ straight from the cutlery drawer, sorting through the other possessions in the front room.
They must have remained very quiet. Instead of stealing any goods, they stole out the back door before I ever put the ’phone down or realised what had happened.
It is a frightening experience, and it made me extra vigilant: extra bolts and locks, rethinking the alarm system, and so on. The police knew who the ‘likely suspects’ were, but they could offer no guarantees that I was never going to be broken into again … and again.
It is an experience that was also a reminder of my own vulnerability, and a reminder that what I own and possess is not really mine, and not mine for very long. Finding the ‘kitchen devil’ on the floor was also a sharp reminder that even my life is not mine for very long.
And so, the image of Christ in this Gospel reading, of a thief coming unexpectedly to break into my house, may not be a very comforting one for those of us brought up with the image of ‘Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild.’
And yet it is an image that has echoes in the poetry of some of the great mystical writers in Anglican history. It reminds me, for example, of the words of John Donne (Holy Sonnets XIV):
Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
It is the passionate language of love, of passionate love. But then, of course, Christ demands our passion, our commitment, our love.
Christ has left the Temple and is on the Mount of Olives, teaching them about the kingdom (Matthew 24: 3). But in some of the other Gospel accounts, as he speaks to them, someone in the crowd – like a heckler – interrupts and asks a question (see Luke 12: 13).
The inner circle of the Disciples must have felt at times they were being broken into by those on the rims, those in the crowd of outsiders, the crowd or multitude following Christ but who were not among the Disciples. So Christ’s demands are made not just of some inner circle, for some elite group within the Church, for those who are seen as pious and holy.
This is a demand he makes also to those on the margins, for the sake of those on the margins, that he makes on the whole Church for the sake of those on the margins.
We are to be ever vigilant that we do not keep those on the margins on the outside for too long. They may appear like thieves trying to break in. But when we welcome in those on the outside who we see as thieves, we may find we are welcoming Christ himself.
And in welcoming Christ himself, into our inner sanctum, we are making it a sign of the Kingdom. The Church needs to be a place not where we feel secure, but where the outsider feels welcome, where they can feast and taste what the Kingdom of God is like.
What is this Kingdom like?
Where is it?
When shall we find it?
Earlier in this chapter, Christ tells them that ‘the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations’ before the end will come (verse 14).
The word for master Christ uses throughout thus reading (verses 45, 46, 48, 50) is κύριος (kyrios), Lord, the word used in the Septuagint or Greek version of the Old Testament for the Lord God by Jews who found the use of the name of God offensive and blasphemous. But using the word master for κύριος hides away God’s work, confusing the Lord, the ‘Son of Man’ (ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ho yios tou anthropou), with the ‘master of the house,’ the householder (οἰκοδεσπότης, oikodespótēs).
The Lord who arrives at an unexpected hour, day or night in this reading is the same Christ who says: ‘Behold, I am standing at the door knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you and eat with you, and you with me’ (Revelation 3: 20).
He comes in ways we do not expect, and at ‘the unexpected hour,’ the time we ‘think nothing of’ (ᾗ οὐ δοκεῖτε ὥρᾳ he ou dokeite ora, verse 44) – ‘an hour that seems like nothing.’ He does not bother trying to tear down our puny defences. He sneaks around them instead.
Expect the unexpected.
Prepare to welcome the stranger who knocks at the door at the unexpected hour.
Allow the stranger among you, and the stranger within you, to open that door and discover that Christ is not a thief trying to steal what you have, but is the Lord who is trying to batter our hearts and tear down our old barriers so that we can all feast together at the new banquet:
Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
…
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Today’s Prayers (Thursday 27 August 2026):
In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week, from 23 to 29 August 2026 (pp 32-33), is ‘Legacies of History’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a reflection by the Revd Dr Rachele Evie Vernon O’Brien, a Jamaican-born theologian and advocate.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 27 August 2026) invites us to pray:
God of wisdom, open our hearts and minds as we learn more about the history of the Church. Help us listen carefully, understand deeply, and remember that you promise to restore all that is broken.
The Collect of the Day:
Faithful God, who strengthened Monica, the mother of Augustine, with wisdom, and through her patient endurance encouraged him to seek after you: give us the will to persist in prayer that those who stray from you may be brought to faith in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name, your servant Monica revealed your goodness in a life of tranquillity and service: grant that we who have gathered in faith around this table may like her know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge and be filled with all your fullness; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s reflections
Continued tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org