A Reflection on Luke 21:34-36
Look, Jesus isn't messing around here. He's telling you straight up: don't let
your life get so clogged with worrying, about money, or what people think of
you, your endless scrolling, your Netflix queue, your work stress, all that
stuff that feels so urgent right now; STOP or you will completely miss what
actually matters. Here's the uncomfortable truth: there's a day coming, and you
don't know when, and if you're spiritually asleep when it arrives, you're going
to be caught totally unprepared. That "day" might be the end of all
things, but it's also every moment when God is trying to break through to you
and you're too distracted to notice. This isn't meant to scare you into some
paranoid anxiety, it's meant to wake you up to the reality that your life right
now, today, is the training ground for eternity.
So, what does Jesus say to do about it? Watch and pray. Not "worry
constantly" or "figure everything out" or "be
perfect." Watch, meaning pay attention, stay awake, keep your eyes open to
what God is actually doing around you and in you. And pray, meaning stay
connected to Him, talk to Him, listen to Him, let Him into the mess of your
daily life. I learned what this really means when my world fell apart; not
once, but three times. In 2014, I had two strokes while my wife Chrissy was
dying of cancer. Think about that for a second: I was supposed to be taking
care of her, and suddenly she had to take care of me. Our whole world was
crumbling. Then in 2020, after she had already passed and I was working so hard
to put my life back together, I had a third stroke. And you know what the only
lifeline was through all of that? The Rosary. That's it. Those beads in my hand
and the decision to trust that whatever God's plan was for me, I would accept
it. This is exactly what Jesus is talking about; staying awake and being ready
even when everything is falling apart, especially when everything is falling
apart.
Here's what makes this passage so unsettling: Jesus says these troubles will
come upon "all who dwell on the face of the whole earth." Nobody gets
a pass. You can't escape it by being good enough or rich enough or careful
enough. The question isn't whether the storm is coming, it's whether you'll be
standing when it does. And the only way to stand is to be rooted in something
deeper than your own strength, your own understanding, your own ability to keep
it together. When I was facing those strokes, when Chrissy and I were watching
our life unravel, we didn't have some magic formula that made it all okay. What
we had was the faith to watch and pray, to keep our eyes on God even when we
couldn't see where any of this was going. That's terrifying, honestly, because
it means you can't control this. But it's also freeing, because Jesus isn't
asking you to save yourself, He's asking you to stay awake and stay close to
Him so that He can
give you the strength to stand. And somehow, through all of it; the strokes,
the cancer, the grief, the rebuilding, that's exactly what happened.
Every single day you have a choice: will you let the weight of everything numb
you out and drag you down, or will you fight to stay spiritually awake? The
Rosary, with all its repetition, is like a rope thrown to a drowning person; it's
not fancy, but it works if you grab hold of it. I'm telling you from
experience: when you're lying there after a stroke, when you're watching someone,
you love slip away, when your whole life has to be rebuilt from scratch, that
rope is real. Those decades you pray are building something in you, even when
you can't feel it: the ability to turn your attention back to God again and
again and again, despite everything trying to pull you away. Each time I faced
another crisis, I had to make that same choice: fully trust in the Lord,
embrace whatever was coming; good, bad, or ugly, and keep praying. Jesus ends
this passage with "pray at all times", not because God needs to hear
more words from you, but because you need to remember, constantly, that you're
not doing this life alone. You need the strength that only comes from Him. So
watch. Pray. Don't fall asleep on your own life. The moment you're living in
right now, this one, right here, is the moment that matters.
©2025 James Dacey Jr., OFS
