A 21st Sunday After Pentecost Thought About What's Coming For Us Working Men

The 21st Sunday after Pentecost brings thoughts of what's coming in the Year of Our Lord 2024. 

The fall has fully unfolded now. Depending on where you live in the Northern Hemispherre, the leaves may have begun to turn, perhaps they've approached full color. 

For us working men, the end of year beckons. Depending on our particular job, this could range from business as usual to a checklist of items that must be addressed with a degree of urgency. In our business, there are special year-end planning items that we review with clients - items that, if appropriate to their circumstances, need to be addressed by them, perhaps with our help, before Christmas.

And, of course, while Christmas remains in the distance, that distance shortens by the day. Indeed, the media in recent years had taken to marketing Christmas even before fall officially begins. But never mind that. We Catholic men should be impervious to marketing shills by now - right?

If year-end brings urgent demands, the tug is likely being felt by now. After all, year-end isn't really actual year-end. By the week before Christmas, if we're on top of things, we should have put to bed all the urgency. So maybe we should think of this last leg of the year as the "before Christmas" push rather than year-end.

In any case, if indeed important and urgent year-end items have begun to pop up in our Task List, it's time to take a deep breath and dive into the pool. There's no holding back. As the gun goes off to start the work week, we need to be ready, willing, and able to jump out of the starting blocks, like a well-trained and seasoned track athlete. For some of us a sprint will be the image that pops up; for others, perhaps the 5 or 10 thousand meter run. 

But even those of us who more or less work in a business-as-usual job will feel the heat of those scurrying about around us striving to meet the demands of year-end.

Into all of this, God continues to give us our Sundays, the day He gives for rest, as He rested on the 7th Day after completing the work of Creation. 

Let's not allow ourselves to be totally infected by a secular world that has more or less made Sunday a day to shop, drive the kids to soccer, or engage in any of the myriad other activities that serve mammon rather than God or, for that matter, man. Sunday can and should be - at least in some degree - our respite from all that.

Notice we say "at least in some degree." It's just facing reality when we do so. Even those of us who know what Sunday is "supposed to be" may not be able to totally extract ourselves from the ways of the world for the whole day. But we can try to at least carve out a good slice of the Lord's Day, beginning with our attendance at Holy Mass. With the grace we receive from the Holy Sacrifice and our reception of Holy Communion, we're well equipped to make Sunday Sunday.

With prayers and hope that we can do this, a best wish for a...

 

Happy Sunday!