Daily Gospel Reflection
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August 26, 2021
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Stay awake!
For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.
Be sure of this: if the master of the house
had known the hour of night when the thief was coming,
he would have stayed awake
and not let his house be broken into.
So too, you also must be prepared,
for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.
“Who, then, is the faithful and prudent servant,
whom the master has put in charge of his household
to distribute to them their food at the proper time?
Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so.
Amen, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property.
But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is long delayed,’
and begins to beat his fellow servants,
and eat and drink with drunkards,
the servant’s master will come on an unexpected day
and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely
and assign him a place with the hypocrites,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”
This summer, one of my neighbors took a long road trip with her family and asked if I would help take care of her garden and chickens while they were gone. I happily agreed, but when the garden started producing more cherry tomatoes than I knew what to do with and my own daily responsibilities to my husband and newly-walking toddler kept me away from my neighbor’s house more than I wanted, I started to fear that I wasn’t being a faithful steward. I decided that I would enlist my husband’s help to watch our son the day before my neighbors were scheduled to return so that I could have a couple of uninterrupted hours to prepare the garden for the family’s return.
To my surprise, they came home exactly one day early. The master of the household had returned at an hour I did not expect.
I was disappointed and asked myself, “Am I just the wicked servant, unprepared and making excuses?” However, I realized that my neighbor was truly grateful for all that I had done. In prayer, the Lord revealed to me that my disappointment came instead from my own people-pleasing tendencies and sense of perfectionism.
I think that when the Master returns at an unexpected hour, he comes with a heart of mercy. God’s question is not, “Did you complete your tasks perfectly?” but rather, “Where is your heart?” and “Why do you live as you do?”
When we think about the answers to these questions, we may realize that we carry out our responsibilities lovingly or begrudgingly, to please others or to be loved and respected, to accomplish our own plan or avoid getting in trouble.
Whatever the answers, I pray that, if the Master were to return today, he might find us doing the work he has entrusted to us out of a genuine love for the Master himself, his household, and his people.
Prayer
Lord God, your ways are mysterious and we are easily distracted and lulled to sleep. Help us to be alert, and to be not presumptuous of your mercy. Enlighten us that we may recognize the danger of drifting through our days and being overtaken by our own negligence. Wake us and enable us by your grace. Amen.
Saint of the Day
Our Lady of Czestochowa is an image of Mary located in Poland. The icon is also known as the Black Madonna because the image has darkened from the soot of so many votive candles burning near it. Czestochowa is one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in Poland—many people visit the shrine to venerate Mary in this icon.
Tradition holds that the icon was painted by St. Luke upon wood that had been part of the table in the home of the Holy Family. It is said that the image was kept in royal palaces in Constantinople and Ukraine after St. Helen found it in Jerusalem. It came to Czestochowa in 1382 by way of a nobleman who was escaping an attack in Ukraine—he stopped to rest in the town and entrusted it to a monastery there.
In 1430, robbers looted the monastery and stole the image. In trying to remove precious stones from the icon, they smashed the wood and made slashes in the paint. When the icon was restored, the artists retained the slashes that were made on Mary’s face.
In the image, Mary’s hand points to Jesus, as she did with her whole life. Jesus holds a book of the Gospels in one hand and extends the other to the viewer in a blessing.
The image is associated with a miracle that marked a turning point in a war between Poland and Sweden in 1655. Monks and other people in the monastery were severely outnumbered by the invading Swedish forces but managed to repel the attackers with the miraculous intervention of Mary.
The image also played a large role in the devotional life of the young St. Maximilian Kolbe; he experienced a moment of conversion as a boy when he was praying in front of this image, and the experience shaped the rest of his life.
A replica of the Our Lady of Czestochowa image stands in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, and it faithfully reproduces even the slash marks on Mary’s face. The image was a gift to Father Edward Sorin, C.S.C., founder of Notre Dame, from the Polish Carmelite Sisters in the Shrine of St. Bridget in Rome. The sisters gave it to Father Sorin, who was superior general of the Congregation of Holy Cross at the time, “as a sign of perpetual friendship.”
Our Lady of Czestochowa, you are captured in the miraculous image of Mary venerated by Polish people—pray for us!
Personalize and share a prayer card with this image of Our Lady of Czestochowa at our prayer card page.