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The Lord be with you.

A reading from the Holy Gospel as written to us by Matthew.

Jesus said to his disciples,

as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be of the coming of the human one.

In those days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the

day that Noah entered the arc.

They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.

So will it be also at the coming of the human one.

Two men will be out in the field, one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women

will be grinding at the mill, one will be taken and one will be left. So stay awake. You do not know on

which day your Lord will come.

But be sure of this, if the Master of the House

had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into.

So too, you also must be prepared, for an hour you do not expect, the human one will arrive.

This is the Gospel of the Lord.

After 50 years of trying to preach on the Sunday Gospel, one thing I've learned is that the first seemingly common sense understanding is hardly ever the best.

And that would certainly be true of this Sunday. And one reason for that is we don't understand

what they would call apocalyptic literature, which always sounds like threatening literature. That's really not the meaning.

Apocalypseis means an unveiling, an unveiling of what is not obvious.

And so it's the second reading, the reading a second time that we must pay attention to. So I had time to do that. I hope you did too. Catholics

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