St. Jerome, Priest and Doctor of the Church
Job 9:1-12,14-16  +  Luke 9:57-62
September 30, 2020

“I will follow you wherever you go.”

Teachers need to teach their students—and parents, their children—that the two most important moments of one’s life are now and the hour of one’s death.  Likely we’ve known persons who live as if death will never arrive, living only for “now”.  The spiritual goal is constantly to relate these two:  now, and the hour of one’s death.

The world around us, including secular schools that want to produce “achievers”, seeks by contrast to relate every now to goals that one plans for:  goals to be realized next week, next month, next year, or upon retirement.  Yet those are short-sighted if they’re not set within the larger context of one’s death.

In fact, everything we do now, or don’t do now, bears on that hour of our death.  By everything we do or don’t do, we choose whether to follow Jesus.

If our young people are firmly resolved to prepare themselves for the hour of death, they will be firmly resolved in the “now” of every moment to follow whatever God asks.  Yet here we have to be mindful of the way in which God dwells in the present moment.  The need of a human person in the here and now often upsets our well-laid plans.  But Jesus often presents Himself to us in the present moment in the guise of those most in need.

St. Jerome, Priest & Doctor of the Church