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`Let your loins be girded, and the lamps burning,
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and ye like to men waiting for their lord, when he shall return out of the wedding feasts, that he having come and knocked, immediately they may open to him.
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`Happy those servants, whom the lord, having come, shall find watching; verily I say to you, that he will gird himself, and will cause them to recline (at meat), and having come near, will minister to them;
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and if he may come in the second watch, and in the third watch he may come, and may find [it] so, happy are those servants.
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`And this know, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief doth come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken through;
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and ye, then, become ye ready, because at the hour ye think not, the Son of Man doth come.'
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And Peter said to him, `Sir, unto us this simile dost thou speak, or also unto all?'
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And the Lord said, `Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward whom the lord shall set over his household, to give in season the wheat measure?
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Happy that servant, whom his lord, having come, shall find doing so;
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truly I say to you, that over all his goods he will set him.
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`And if that servant may say in his heart, My lord doth delay to come, and may begin to beat the men-servants and the maid-servants, to eat also, and to drink, and to be drunken;