A Homily by Deacon Bob…

This is one of those gospel passages that has really good news, and really bad news. I’m going to end with the really good news.

First, I want to talk about the guy who buried his talent. Notice that this guy ends up in hell not because he broke one of the 10 commandments, but because of what he didn’t do. He failed to do something he ought to have done and the failure was serious enough that it put him in hell.

But that leads to a question – what did he do or not do that was so evil? It can seem that the master in this parable is overly harsh. This parable has always been a struggle for me because it appears that the man was afraid, and out of fear of losing money he chose to bury it and for that, he’s sent to hell.

The early church fathers had a different take on this parable. In their view, the man decided, either out of laziness and/or wickedness that he did not want to make any effort to earn interest for his master and so he buried the talent. Then, when the master called on him, he came up with an excuse that he buried it because he was afraid.

Jesus calls the man wicked and lazy. If the man were truly afraid, if that was the issue, why would Jesus condemn him for being wicked and lazy. Furthermore, we’ve all probably done this, or we’ve seen it in others, that when we do something wrong, we come up with some excuse. In this case, not only does he come up with an excuse that he was afraid, but he blames the master. St. Jerome said that he ought to have acknowledged his fault and entreated his master for mercy, but instead he offers a lame excuse and suggests that he acted as he did because of the master.

So, I think this helps us understand why the punishment is so harsh. The master didn’t say he had to double his money like the other 2 guys, only that he do something – put it in the bank so he could have had some return. But he did nothing. It was like he was given a talent, and he deliberately did nothing with it so the master would have no return.

There are 2 quick lessons I want to draw from this.

1. The first is a warning that a sin of omission can be serious. In fact, this parable is the 2^nd of 3 parables in Matthew 25 and in all 3, persons go to hell because of sins of omission. As a quick reminder, the 3 conditions for a mortal sin are: it has to be serious, we know it’s wrong, and we choose to do it, or not do it, anyway.
2. Avoid making excuses when we fall. Especially in confession. It’s okay to provide some explanation to give the Priest a better understanding of our sin, but we never want to do it in such a way that we’re excusing ourselves. We’ve got to own it.   

The good news is that God has given every one of us some talent or talents, some ability to love and serve others that is fruitful and gives glory to Him. And it doesn’t matter whether we have great abilities or more ordinary abilities; what matters is that out of love, we try to do our best with what we have.

I think that is the connection between the gospel and the first reading. The Church always picks a first reading to go along with the gospel and I think that’s the connection today. The woman in our first reading is a wife and a homemaker. She does ordinary things with great love, and she is rewarded. Just like the first 2 guys in the parable, she too will hear the Lord say to her, “well done my good and faithful servant, come share your master’s joy”. It isn’t our abilities that the Lord looks at, it’s the heart. It’s not so much what we do, but the love with which we do it.

Now I want to go a little deeper regarding love that is truly fruitful and gives glory to God. Not long ago I was reading a book by a Carmelite priest, Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene called “The Way of Prayer” in which he summarizes St. Teresa’s “The Way of Perfection” and in it he defines perfect, or pure love. This is really good, so I want to just read what he said:

Theologians say that perfect love has 3 characteristics:

1. To seek its motive in God alone: love always has its motives; the soul who loves purely loves with God as motive.
2. Not to seek a return in any way: it is a love of pure good will to give and is not concerned about receiving.
3. To desire spiritual goods for its beloved; if sometimes it desires material goods for him, it is in view of spiritual ones. And all supernatural goods are contained in the simple desire that he be holy.

These are the characteristics of perfect love according to the doctrine of Saint Thomas, and they correspond to those given by Saint Teresa.

So, God is the motive, we seek nothing in return, and our first concern is the spiritual good of the other.

Okay, what does this look like in practice for ordinary Catholics like us? It could look like this. Just yesterday I got a call from a friend who asked for my input on a family issue. This person is not a Bowieite, so don’t spend time wondering who it is. Very quickly, she has a daughter who was married with 3 children, she divorced her husband and threw him out of the house so she could have her boyfriend live with her. Now she can’t afford the house and she wants to lease another house in the neighborhood so she asked her mother, my friend, to lend her money. So, my friend was leaning in a certain direction but wanted to know what I thought. I said I don’t have an immediate answer, but I’ll pray and get back to you. In the meantime, I said, call my wife Joni because she’s really good with questions like this. We hung up and I started praying, okay Lord, what would you do in this situation, and an answer came to me almost immediately and very strong, there’s no way I would support my daughter in these choices. And we see this in the Bible over and over again. God allows us, His children, to suffer the consequences of our bad choices precisely so that we will change and make good choices. So, I called her back and gave her my thoughts. She wasn’t able to connect with Joni, so I spoke with Joni a little later and she had the same response immediately.

Love that is fruitful and gives glory to God is first concerned with a person’s soul, that the person be good. This can be really difficult. My friend said she felt her conscience was telling her the same thing, but she’s afraid her daughter will cut off their relationship if she doesn’t give the money. It’s really hard, but it’s the right thing.

Several years ago, another friend of mine gave tough love to her nephew, and after she said no to him, she spent the rest of the day with her friends crying her heart out. It’s hard, but a couple years later he got his life on a good track. Her love was fruitful.

So, brothers and sisters, let us first be thankful to God for our abilities and try our best to use them for the good of others. Let us have as our first concern the spiritual good, the soul of the other, that our works may be truly fruitful and give glory to God, so that someday we too will hear those beautiful words “well done, good and faithful servant”.