Friday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 38:1–6, 21–22, 7–8
Hezekiah was sick.
Not slightly sick. Not temporarily weak.
He was dying.
Then Isaiah came to him with a word no one wants to hear:
“Put your house in order, for you are about to die.”
Hezekiah turned his face to the wall.
He prayed.
He remembered his life before the Lord.
Then he wept bitterly.
There are tears that need no explanation.
A sudden illness. A diagnosis. A sentence spoken in a hospital room. A future suddenly shortened.
In such moments, we understand Hezekiah.
We also turn to the wall.
We also ask:
Why me, Lord? Why now? Is this the end?
Hezekiah prayed and God heard him.
Fifteen years were added to his life.
He was healed.
This is a beautiful story of prayer, mercy, and healing.
But it is not a story about escaping death forever.
Fifteen years pass quickly.
Even Hezekiah had to face death again.
The deeper word remains:
“Put your house in order.”
Sooner or later, that word will come to each of us.
Not always through a prophet. Sometimes through age. Sometimes through illness. Sometimes through the death of someone we love.
We are mortal.
We know this, yet we forget it.
Perhaps we forget because the truth is too heavy.
But remembering death does not have to make us bitter.
It can make us wise.
It can teach us what matters.
It can free us from small anger, old resentment, empty ambition, and postponed love.
After his healing, Hezekiah did not return to an empty life.
He prayed. He trusted. He continued his work. He sought to do what was right in the eyes of the Lord.
That is what it means to put our house in order.
Not only to prepare for death, but to learn how to live.
To forgive while there is time. To love while there is time. To serve while there is time. To say the words that should not remain unsaid.
The Polish priest and poet Jan Twardowski wrote:
“Let us hurry to love people; they pass away so quickly.”
Then he warned:
“Do not be sure you have time, because certainty is uncertain.”
This is not sadness.
This is Gospel wisdom.
May we live long. May we live fully. May we live, like Moses, to one hundred and twenty years.
But more than long life, may we receive a meaningful life:
a life of prayer, a life of mercy, a life of service, a life ready for God because we have learned how to love.
Biblical Reflections on the Gospel of Matthew
Scripture Attribution
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993
the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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