28 Aug 2015
She hardly ever gave him attention anymore. I mean, it wasn’t that he she didn’t like
him; she did. And they’d known each
other since they were little kids; they grew up together . . . they were hardly
strangers. But their whole relationship
just fell apart. Maybe she’d just gotten
too comfortable with him and didn’t think she needed to spend as much time with
him anymore. I don’t know.
Well, whatever the reason, the love story didn’t turn out. And she cried and cried. She did love him but, as these things go, she
didn’t realize it until it was too late.
He’d sent her a letter a month ago, but there it sat on the table,
unopened. “She’d get around to it,
later,” she had said to herself. “Later.” Always “later.” It wasn’t that she didn’t love him; she
did. But she’d get around to him later.
And then, one day, he’d come and gone . . . just like he said
he would in that letter she opened—after the fact. She was vigilant about everything in life,
except for what really mattered. She’d
fallen asleep a long time ago in her relationship with him, and she’d let her oil
lamp burn out without even knowing it.
She was one of the foolish virgins. And here we are, the Church, the Bride of
Christ—always tempted to fall asleep in our relationship with him and to let
our lamp of faith and love burn out.
There’s always the temptation to take Jesus for granted and to just
think, “Oh, he’ll always be there for us.
I can spend time with him later.”
And that’s true. Jesus
is always there for us; and we can
always go to him later. But why not go
to him . . . now? He gives us a divine
package waiting to be opened up; he gives us his Body and Blood, he gives us Scripture
and Tradition, he gives us the world. It’s
all there for us, ready to be taken and enjoyed. Why would we just let that package just sit
there, unopened?
Well, we’ll get around to it later. Really, we will. “Jesus is always there; we’ll get to him
later.”
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