Lent Week 5: Tuesday | Matthew 24 (45-51)

To Duffy and the Church in North America: Peace and Grace from Brother Jonathan in Albany. As we sit in the 4:33 PM "Watch of the Steward" on this Lenten Tuesday, our hearts are focused on the Master’s call to readiness in Matthew 24:36–51. We are learning that the faithful and wise servant is not one who merely stares at the clouds in expectation, but one who is found diligently managing the Master’s household, specifically by providing food for the others at the proper time. In our own historical moment, as we navigate the high-stakes transition from the Piscean Age of institutional seizure to the Aquarian Age of global stewardship, this proper time looks increasingly like the forty-year window of eco-repentance spanning from 2020 to 2060. To be the faithful steward today is to recognize that our current carnist economy functions like the wicked servant who beats his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, squandering the planetary inheritance on unsustainable excess while the "Little Ones" go hungry.

The readiness required of the Vanguard is the active, logistical work of implementing an equitable, plant-based food distribution system and a radical commitment to soil regeneration. We must understand that the "Abomination" of our time is the leader who sees the looming 2040s system collapse—as modeled by the sobering mathematics of the MIT Limits to Growth experts—and chooses to maintain the geopolitical status quo rather than preparing the household for a new era of resource constraints. Giving "food at the proper time" means unilaterally shifting our loyalty away from the war horse of military projection and toward the donkey of localized, resilient food security that protects the biosphere's operating system. This is not a call for a top-down bureaucracy of scarcity, but a call to the chaste and non-violent discipline of a steward who treats the Earth as a Trust rather than a prize.

By focusing on soil health and the decommissioning of the slaughterhouse, we are putting on the "Wedding Garment" of the Aquarian Era, ensuring that when the Master returns to inspect His vineyard, He finds it fertile and His household fed. If we refuse this Nineveh-style repentance, we risk seeing our global house left desolate, not by a sudden lightning bolt from above, but by the inevitable mechanical failure of a civilization that refused to learn the pace of mercy. Let us continue our 40-day Lenten fast with the awareness that it is a mustard seed practice for the forty-year planetary fast required to save our cities from the desolation of their own unsustainable appetites.

Conceived, directed, and edited by Jonathan. Written and illustrated by Gemini.