Gospel: October 21, 2025

October 21, 2025 (Tuesday)

29th Week in Ordinary Time

Psalter: Week 1 / (Green)

Ps 40:7-8a, 8b-9, 10, 17

Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.

1st Reading: Romans 5:12, 15b, 17-19, 20b-21

Gospel: Luke 12:35-38

Be ready, dressed for service, and keep your lamps lit, like people waiting for their master to return from the wedding. As soon as he comes and knocks, they will open the door to him. Happy are those servants whom the master finds wide-awake when he comes. Truly, I tell you, he will put on an apron, and have them sit at table, and he will wait on them. Happy are those servants, if he finds them awake when he comes at midnight or daybreak!

See Also

Journalists exit Pentagon over new reporting rules

Reflection:

“To be like people waiting for their master.”

Holman Hunt’s painting The Light of the World depicts Christ at night, standing at a door and knocking. The door is overgrown with weeds and brambles through lack of use. It also has the peculiar feature of lacking a door handle. This detail is significant, as it tells us that when Christ knocks, we have the choice to open to him or we can remain “obstinately” closed to Christ, as Hunt described it. Christ urges us to be “like people waiting for their master,” ready and eager to open the door of our hearts to him. In Revelation, Jesus knocks at our door. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus also uses this image to encourage us to be ready and alert for his return. Our relationship with God operates on different levels. We depend upon God for our very existence, and so we constantly live in him (Acts 17:28). However, on another level, our lives are only truly blessed if we invite him in to be the honored guest and Lord of our lives. We are to open the door and welcome him in.