The Vigilant and Faithful Servant

Verse 35, "Be ready, dressed for service, and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet" summarises Luke 12:35-48.

On July 25, 2025, two sisters, Preethi Mary and Vandana Francis, belonging to the Assisi Sisters of Mary Immaculate, were arrested at Durg railway station in Chhattisgarh by police in connivance with Bajrang Dal, accusing them of human trafficking and forced conversion. Going beyond the false accusations that were leveled against them, we learn that those sisters were caring for leprosy patients. A minor Malayalam newspaper, Jeevanadham, reporting this news had this caption, eni namukku unarnnirikkam, meaning, "now on let us be awake and alert."

The gospel and the incident that unfolded recently urge us to be watchful, ready, alert, and prepared. What do they imply? It simply means to continue to speak up, show up, stand up, defend the poor, and so on. Apparent delay, darkness, uncertainty, etc. are part of a life lived faithfully; to keep doing good and to keep going is the call.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian, was living with his fiancée and was working at the Union Theological Seminary, New York. Then we have World War II. Those who could afford it began running away from Nazi Germany. Bonhoeffer could have remained safely in America but chose to return to Nazi Germany. "I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people," he wrote. I think that is being awake. Bonhoeffer returned to Nazi Germany. He would soon be accused of joining the plot to assassinate Hitler and spend two years in prison. He was executed by the Nazi regime at Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9, 1945.

In his most famous book, The Cost of Discipleship (1937), Dietrich Bonhoeffer contrasts cheap grace with costly grace. Cheap grace is a superficial understanding of God's grace, where forgiveness and grace are expected without genuine repentance or a call to discipleship. Costly grace, on the other hand, is grace that demands a complete commitment to following Jesus, including sacrifice, obedience, and a transformed life—grace that might cost a Christian his or her very life. Being awake and alert is costly grace.

Mother Teresa worked among the dying in the streets of Calcutta. For decades, she experienced what she called "the darkness"—a profound sense of God's absence. Yet she continued to serve, her lamp flickering but never extinguished. Years after her death, we learned that she had written, "As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear." Mother Teresa, as a good servant, was faithful and waiting.

Jesus, in his agony and suffering in his last days on earth, had called on his Father, sweating blood, but the heavens remained silent. Jesus remained ready and watchful and completed the mission that he was sent to accomplish. Jesus urges each generation to a life of purposeful readiness. One must resist the temptation to spiritual complacency that comes when God seems distant or delayed. The heroes of faith teach us that faithfulness often means serving in the darkness, trusting that dawn will come even when we cannot see the first glimmer of light.

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