Mass Readings Audio
https://bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/2020-12-06-usccb-daily-mass-readings
Second Sunday of Advent – December 6, 2020
Welcome to the one hundred and forty-first episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life.
My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.
In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Second Sunday of Advent. (Year B) Last week, in episode 140 of By Your Life, we talked about succession planning and the importance of preparing for your departure. I mentioned that many leaders fail to appropriately plan this inevitability. There are a lot of reasons, I suppose, but my guess is that one of two things is getting in the way. Either they don’t prioritize it as important, or they don’t know who could possibly take their place. One is a failure in time management and the other is a failure in humility.
Managing Priorities
When Dr. Stephen R. Covey teaches about time management, he really is talking about priority management. In his book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Habit #3 is Put First Things First. He says, “First things are those things you, personally, find of most worth. If you put first things first, you are organizing and managing time and events according to personal priorities.”
Covey writes about understanding the difference between the important and the urgent and uses a matrix to illustrate his point. (See image below.) He says that when prioritizing things to be done, you should consider them on a continuum of not important to important and urgent to not urgent. When you place them in the matrix they will fall in one of four quadrants: Q1 Important and urgent, Q2 important but not urgent, Q3 not important but urgent, and Q4 not important and not urgent.
Too often, we operate in Q3 and allow urgency to drive our priority even if it is unimportant. What is worse, if procrastination is a problem, we operate in crisis mode in Q1 where everything is important and urgent.
Procrastination is the result of poor prioritization where you choose to work on things of lesser importance, putting off those things of greater importance. Since important things don’t go away, putting them off only puts you in crisis mode when they become urgent.
In our second reading for this Sunday, St. Peter wrote, “with the Lord, one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day.” (2 Pet 3:8) When we are busy, time flies like a thousand years in one day. And those things like succession planning and developing our replacements that we know are important but are not urgent, never get our attention.
Spiritually, the same thing can happen during the Advent Season. The world is in such a rush to Christmas, it doesn’t even wait until after Thanksgiving to bring out the Santas and the reindeer. When we get caught up in the busyness of preparing for the coming of Christmas, we fail to prepare our hearts for the coming of the Lord.
It is already the Second Sunday in Advent. Christmas will be here before we know it and if we’re not careful, if we don’t prioritize the important but not urgent time for spiritual reflection and development, we won’t be ready. “The day of the Lord will come like a thief,” (2 Pet 3:10), and as St. Peter asked, “what sort of persons ought [you] to be”? (2 Pet 3:11)
Managing Pride
What struck me most in our readings for this Sunday as it relates to succession planning, was in our Gospel when John the Baptist said, “One mightier than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals. (Mk 1:7) I thought, wow! What if every leader looked for a successor who was mightier than he or she? It only makes sense that to prepare a company for the growth and changes that lie ahead, the leaders should seek not to find someone who can do the job as well as they can, rather someone who will be able to do the job better than they can because they will face new and bigger challenges as the business grows. This should be the goal of every leader.
I worked with two second-generation CEOs who took over for their fathers. Both sons did a phenomenal job taking their family business to the next level. They both embraced technology and implemented new strategies that allowed the businesses to grow from a “mom and pop” to many multiples of their size. None of this meant that their fathers had done a poor job. What it meant was that they had done a great job taking the businesses to the point where they could be handed over and then letting go so they could grow into something they had never envisioned possible.
Interestingly, in one of these companies, it was the second son who took over as CEO, bucking the tradition of passing the reigns onto the eldest son. But this father knew his sons, knew their talents and skills and selected the one who was best suited for taking the top job. Both sons continued to work together using their own unique talents and the company continued to grow as a result.
Making Way for the Mighty
No matter what our role, whether in business or in ministry, we are all like John the Baptist, preparing the way for the one who is to come after. Preparing for our departure and clearing the way for the one who comes next is an essential part of our job as a leader. Seeking one who is mightier takes humility and if you’re thinking that no one can possibly take your place, you might want to do an ego check. Nothing will get in the way of effective succession planning more than pride.
On the other hand, with humility, a leader can consider their contributions as nothing more than a prelude for what is to come. They are merely preparing the company for greatness, for something better than what is. The humble leader recognizes they are filling a role in a succession of leadership that is part of the company’s long-term plan.
Now, imagine how this frame of reference would change how leaders treated the next generation of leadership. Imagine a CEO looking at that new hire as “one mightier than I.” (Mk 1:7) Imagine how they would prepare the way for them to succeed. Imagine how they would welcome them, include them, teach them, appreciate them. What if we were to look at another with the humility that says we are not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals? How different would your workplace be? How different our world would be!
I know that sounds like a bunch of crazy talk. It certainly is countercultural. If you try it you might be as lonesome as “A voice of one crying out in the desert.” (Mk 1:3), and people may criticize you. But it isn’t so crazy when you think about what it would do for the long-term success of your business. Imagine what would happen if instead of dismissing that person who has the great ideas out of fear that they may show you up, you clear the way for them to make things happen. I bet more people with more great ideas will come forward, and more great things will happen.
This week, I encourage you to do two things: take some time to look at your schedule and ask yourself if you’ve set aside time for the important but not urgent things that you need to get done, including spiritually preparing for Christmas. Secondly, think about who is coming after you, and are you preparing the way for one mightier than you?
Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us. Come Holy Spirit, fill our hearts as we prepare the way of the Lord. Fill us with a knowledge of the right priorities so that we don’t become consumed by the urgent and allow the important to fall by the wayside. Fill us with a spirit of humility that allows us to look at others as mightier than we. So that in all that we do, we may glorify the Lord, by our lives.
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