Ostium Catholic

Keep watch over yourselves first. Before the flock, before the community, before the people you are responsible for - keep watch over your own interior life. Paul gives this charge to the Ephesian elders and it is the right order: the man who has abandoned his own vigilance cannot sustain vigilance over anything else.

In your twenties the world presses in with its version of what is real - what success is, what belonging looks like, what matters. Jesus prays for consecration in truth as the alternative to removal: not taken out of the world, but set apart within it by the word that names what is actually real. The consecrated life is not the sheltered life. It is the life that has a ground to stand on when the world's version of reality is loud.

It is more blessed to give than to receive. That sentence comes from someone who has demonstrated it for three years. In your twenties, the formation of the giving self - the person whose default is generosity rather than self-protection - is worth intentional investment. The giving that comes from the center, not the surplus, is what Paul is describing.

Keep watch over yourself. Identify one interior area this week - prayer, honesty, a pattern you know is not good for you - and give it specific attention for three days. The watching-over of yourself is not self-absorption. It is the precondition for everything else.

Lord, keep watch over me so I can keep watch over what I am responsible for. Consecrate me in truth - set apart within the world, standing on the word. And let me give from the center. Come, Holy Spirit. Alleluia. Amen.