Survey Promo
RVA App Promo Image

Acting Outside of Schedules

August 25, Thursday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time
Daily readings: 1 Corinthians 1:1-9 and Matthew 24:42-51

Holiness is a daily call for each one of us.

We have been so programmed to follow schedules. We move according to schedules. While schedules put order into our lives, they also programmed us only to behave as scheduled. We become slaves to schedules such that outside it, we seem incompetent and unprepared.

Some students complained about low grades because of unannounced quizzes and graded recitations. This employee missed the promotion opportunity because he did not exert much effort yet. After all, there was no promotion schedule yet. Even in our mission work, some would miss our gift-giving because they didn’t attend mass, saying ‘there was no scheduled gift-giving.

Not all about life is on schedule. Sickness, death, accidents, those small miracles, and many other beautiful surprises are not scheduled.

The Gospel today reiterates this. We do not know when the master is coming. He will come, but we do not know when. Every day, every hour then is a possibility. This requires preparedness every moment.

What is this reminding us about? This calls us to be good and do good for every breathing moment. Goodness, or doing good, is not something that should be scheduled. I shouldn’t be seasonal. We should not only be generous during the Christmas Season, nor should we be only repentant during the Lenten Season.

Every day is an opportunity to share, whether someone knocks on your door for food or no one is asking. We can always give without being asked for donations. Every day, too, is an opportunity to have a change of heart, be repentant, go to confession, or just do something good. It could be a short message to someone we’ve hurt or making that first gesture to get in touch with someone who has offended us.

The point is as we cannot schedule tragic events, we should not also schedule acts of kindness.

Holiness is a daily call for each one of us. As God is faithful, we are called to be faithful, not people acting on schedules. This is what fidelity means.

 

Radio Veritas Asia (RVA), a media platform of the Catholic Church, aims to share Christ. RVA started in 1969 as a continental Catholic radio station to serve Asian countries in their respective local language, thus earning the tag “the Voice of Asian Christianity.”  Responding to the emerging context, RVA embraced media platforms to connect with the global Asian audience via its 21 language websites and various social media platforms.