There are some weeks where you just “know” what you’re going to hear as the homily at Sunday Mass based on the readings. It’s the Xth Sunday of Ordinary Time which is the Parable of Y so we’ll be hearing Father (or Deacon) preach Z because everytime the Parable of Y comes up, we hear Z.
This past Sunday, the Gospel was the parable of the master who doled out talents in varying quantities to his servants, and as told by Matthew, two went off and traded and doubled the investment, while the third went off and hid what he received to return only what he received. The cynic in me expected this to be one of those situations where we get the typical canned homily. To my surprise, Father gave it a twist and preached a really good, and different, homily and I figured I should record the gist of it for posterity.
Normally, the canned, tried-and-true homily on this Gospel goes something like this: “God gave you certain talents. You don’t want to be like the third servant who went and hid what he was given. You need to you use your talents to build up the Kingdom of God. So go and volunteer. If God gave you a singing voice, join the church choir. If you can sort of play two chords on the guitar, join the contemporary music group. ([cynical] If you can eke out more than two chords, then don’t. [/cynical]) If you have a talent for teaching, think about volunteering to teach CCD. If you are good at cooking, join up with a local food pantry. Don’t bury these talents God has given you; make use of them to help out your fellow man.” The more “stewardship-y” your parish is, the more of these lines you get. C’mon, we’ve all heard it. If your priest is particularly good, he’ll throw in there something about upping your envelope offerings too. The emphasis is on the third servant, who hid what what was given to him, and how we should not be like that.
So, here’s a summary of Fr. Concha’s homily. The Lord has given everybody a pool of talent to use while he is away. We have options as to what we do with them. We can be like the first two servants and go trade with them to receive more, or we can be like the third who kept what he had. Some would say that this Gospel encourgages us to use our talents. Some say if you’re good at writing then you should write and if you’re good at gardening then you should garden and if you’re good at both you should write about gardening. But this is a very selfish view. Rather, we need to trade with our talents to gain more, and to be willing to do whatever the Lord calls us to do with them. He then gave an example of a young Karol Wojtyla, who was incredibly talented in the area of theatre, writing plays, acting, and performing. When he considered entering the seminary and becoming a priest, so many tried to discourage him, on account of what he would be giving up. It would mean an end to his dramatic career. But the Lord was calling him to the priesthood, and so he followed. As Pope JPII, he was able to still leverage those earlier talents, but in new and different ways. God is calling us to do likewise. We need to be willing to give up the talents we have in order to gain new ones. We have to be like the wife in the first reading, who uses her talents and learns new ones to bring many good things to the household. We can’t simply take what we have and stop there, but we have to ask the Lord what can we do to make them better and get new ones? And sometimes that means giving up certain gifts. Then truly we will be following the example of the good servants who traded their talents and ended up returning more on the investment. And then when we come face to face with the Lord, he will say to us “Well done, good and faithful servant. Come share your master’s joy.”
I’ve never heard that take on this passage before, yet it totally makes sense. Interestingly enough, on Wednesday, the Gospel gave the Lucan account of the same parable. (Fr. Concha also gave a homily on this Gospel that was completely different, yet equally cool, but this post is going to be long enough without explaining that one as well.) In Luke’s version, the master actually says “Engage in trade with these until I return.” And so I got to thinking again.
The idea of trading is to give up something you have in exchange for something different. Fundamental to any exchange is the notion that the value of what is being received is greater than the value of what is being given up. (At it’s root, that’s the entire basis of the market system, is it not?) And so sometimes we need to sacrifice some of our talents in exchange for something that will bring a greater good.
Naturally, there’s a vocational tie-in to all this. Whatever vocation God has for us, it will require us to make certain sacrifices, but the reward will be much greater. And those talents that we can no longer exercise because of the new state in life will be replaced by ones that are considerably greater, if we allow God to do His work.
I’d love to go on with more observations, but I think I’ll leave this here for now, and maybe do a follow-up later. In any case, it was really nice to have a different homily that encouraged thought and reflection.
