Eventide & Altar

Jesus says people are skilled at reading the weather and blind to their own moment. Settle what is fixable now, he says, before it costs far more than it would have cost today. Paul's first reading gives the gentler half: bear with one another in love.

A long life accumulates unsettled matters the way a house accumulates boxes in the attic, an old disagreement with a sibling never fully resolved, an apology owed and never quite given, a silence with someone that has lasted so long nobody remembers exactly how it started. It is tempting, at this stage, to let those things simply stay in the attic, reasoning that there is not much time or energy left to disturb them. Jesus's advice runs the other direction. The cost of an unsettled matter rarely gets smaller with age. It usually just gets more expensive to finally clear.

Bearing with someone and settling something honestly are not opposites. Patience for what genuinely needs patience can coexist with actually addressing what is still fixable, and tonight is as fair a night as any to ask which unsettled thing has been sitting in your own attic the longest.

Some of what is unsettled may no longer be resolvable in this life, the person already gone, the conversation no longer possible. For that, the Rosary and the Mass remain open channels even now. What is still possible to settle in this life is worth settling while there is still time to do it in person.

The Sorrowful Mysteries tonight, since it is Friday. Offer the first mystery, the Agony in the Garden, for the longest-unsettled matter in your own life, whether it can still be resolved in person or only in prayer.

• For the grace to settle what is still fixable, and to bear patiently with what is not, we pray to the Lord.
• For families carrying an old, unresolved wound, we pray to the Lord.
• For all who have died, that any unsettled matter between us and them is healed in the communion of saints, we pray to the Lord.

Name the oldest unsettled matter you are still carrying. If the person is still living, reach out today, even briefly. If not, pray for them by name instead.