Awake to the Essential - Gospel of Thomas

Verse - Awake to the Essential

Mary Magdalene asked Jesus, "What are your disciples like?" He said, "They are like little children who have sat down in a field that is not theirs. When the owners of the field come, they will say, 'Give us back our field.' They will lay down their garments before them, only to be given it to them and to give them their field. Therefore I say, if the owner of the house knows that the thief is coming, he will watch until he comes. He will not let him enter to take his things. But you, be on the alert against the whole world.

Prepare yourselves with the greatest strength so that thieves cannot find a way to you, for the trouble you are expecting will come. If only there were among you a wise man who understood! When the ear of grain was ripe, he came quickly with his sickle in his hand and reaped it. Anyone with two good ears should listen better."

Comment

Children are closest to the kingdom of God. In the field that does not belong to them, in the external world in which they are guests, they allow everything that comes to them to serve them and just as willingly let it go again, without claiming ownership rights. Thus the awakened one lives in the world without being of the world. He allows everything to serve him, but always remains aware of his higher origin and future and is therefore free from the desire for what is fleeting and cannot be kept.

In the midst of everyday life he remains awake for the essential, looks for the imperishable values in the flight of fleeting goods and, seizing them, willingly lets go of everything lesser. He knows that it is not external gains that decide, but inner gain and inner growth. Standing above things, he does not suffer from the transience of all earthly things, but lives and creates from the fullness of the eternal, which is permanent.

Children of God

If we are true children of God, when the masters of the field come, we will willingly give them their field, because we are no longer attached to the transitory. But whoever still looks for earthly goods and wishes to hold on to them, even if only in thought, will have what he is attached to taken away from him. And perhaps, in the midst of the inessential, he will also lose the essential, the treasures of his inner being. The second parable reinforces this reminder to be vigilant.

It is important to pay attention to the point of maturity in everything and to do the right thing immediately at the right moment, like the reaper of whom John speaks, who immediately followed the harvest with the gathering of the wheat and the burning of the chaff, which in turn means that the eternal values must be safely preserved and the transitory ones left alone.