The Memorial of Saint Monica
Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, To the assembly of God which is at Corinth — those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints, with all who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, both theirs and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I always thank my God concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, That in everything you were enriched in him, in all speech and all knowledge — Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you — So that you come behind in no gift, waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who will also confirm you until the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, through whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Every day I will praise you. I will extol your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised! His greatness is unsearchable.
One generation will commend your works to another, And will declare your mighty acts. I will meditate on the glorious majesty of your honor, On your wondrous works.
Men will speak of the might of your awesome acts. I will declare your greatness. They will utter the memory of your great goodness, And will sing of your righteousness.
Watch therefore, for you don't know in what hour your Lord comes. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched, and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore also be ready, for in an hour that you don't expect, the Son of Man will come.
"Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his lord has set over his household, to give them their food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his lord finds doing so when he comes. Most certainly I tell you that he will set him over all that he has. But if that evil servant should say in his heart, 'My lord is delaying his coming,' And begins to beat his fellow servants, and eat and drink with the drunkards, The lord of that servant will come in a day when he doesn't expect it and in an hour when he doesn't know it, And will cut him in pieces and appoint his portion with the hypocrites. That is where the weeping and grinding of teeth will be.
We celebrate today the memorial of Saint Monica, the fourth-century mother of Saint Augustine, whose decades of tearful prayer and persistent faith eventually drew her brilliant, wayward son back to God — and into the heart of the Church.
There's something quietly urgent running through all three of today's readings. Paul opens his letter to the Corinthians not with correction or complaint, but with gratitude — reminding a fractured, struggling community that God has already enriched them, already confirmed them, and will keep doing so until the end. The psalm echoes this: generation after generation, the works of God get passed down, declared, sung about. And then the Gospel lands with its sharp edge — watch, be ready, don't assume there's more time.
Notice how these three voices together form something like a complete picture of the faithful life. There's the past: what God has already done for us. There's the present: the daily work of praising, tending, serving. And there's the future: the moment of accountability we cannot schedule or predict.
Monica lived all three dimensions simultaneously. For years — some accounts say nearly twenty — she prayed for Augustine without visible results. She wasn't passive, but she also couldn't force the outcome. What she could do was remain faithful in the present, trusting in what God had already planted, and hoping in what was still to come.
The servant in the Gospel who goes wrong doesn't commit some dramatic crime. He simply assumes there's more time — and that assumption slowly corrupts everything. Faithfulness, it turns out, isn't a single heroic act. It's what we do on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon when no one is watching and the outcome still feels uncertain.
Consider what it might look like to tend your particular household — your relationships, your responsibilities, your inner life — as if it genuinely matters today.
Where in your life are you quietly assuming there's more time? Who in your life might need the kind of steady, patient faithfulness that Monica offered her son? And what would it mean to praise God not just in the big moments, but in the texture of this ordinary day?