Eventide & Altar

A servant comes in from the field, and instead of being invited to sit and eat, he is told to serve his master's meal first. Jesus asks plainly whether the master thanks him for doing only what he was told, and answers his own question: he does not. Doing your job well is not a credential. It is the baseline.

Today the Church remembers Leo the Great, who in 452 rode out, essentially alone, and persuaded Attila the Hun to turn back from Rome with nothing but his own words. History does not record him claiming credit for it afterward. He returned to Rome and kept doing the next obliged thing, the same way you have kept doing the next obliged thing across decades most people never see or thank you for.

Titus's first reading gives the quieter version of that same steadiness: older men and women are to be temperate, dignified, sound in faith, in love, in endurance - not flashy, sound. Most of what you have done well across a long life never got applauded. Tonight is a fair night to let that be enough, the way it was always going to have to be. The servant in the parable does not sulk about the lack of thanks. He simply keeps serving, which may be the plainer and harder lesson underneath tonight's reading.

The Sorrowful Mysteries tonight, since it is Tuesday. Offer the second mystery, the Scourging at the Pillar, for everyone in your book who served faithfully and quietly without ever being thanked for it here.

• For the grace to serve faithfully without needing applause for it, we pray to the Lord.
• For all who serve quietly and go unthanked, especially the elderly who have served longest, we pray to the Lord.
• For all who have died, especially those whose quiet faithfulness we only recognized after they were gone, we pray to the Lord.

Thank one person today for something ordinary and unglamorous they do faithfully, the kind of thing that usually goes unnoticed.