Investing Wisely God’s Gifts, 33rd Wednesday (II), November 20, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Wednesday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
November 20, 2024
Rev 4:1-11, Ps 150, Lk 19:11-28

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today in the Gospel we have the Parable of the Coins (or Minas), which is similar to that of the more famous Parable of the Talents we read in St. Matthew’s Gospel. The main difference between the two is in this Parable, everyone gets the same investment on the part of the Lord. One servant multiplies the gold coin by 10, another by 5, seven we don’t know about, and the tenth buries it. Whereas with the Parable of the Talents, we can often focus on how many talents we have relative to others, “each according to his ability,” today’s Parable has us focus on the fact that the greatest gifts we’ve received, we have to a large degree received equally with others: the gift of our life, the gift of time, the gift of redemption, the gift of God’s word, the gift of the Sacraments, the gift of prayer, the gift of so many opportunities for charity. How are we investing these? Are we bearing great dividends from them? How are we planning to invest the gift of this day, of this Mass, for loving God and others? We all know that there are some people who really profit from these common gifts and others who place them in handkerchiefs. Most of us would probably give the Lord somewhere between numbers 1 and 10 in return of his investment. But the Lord today wants to teach each of us how to bear great dividends.
• Before we move on, let’s first handle a couple of things for the setting of the Parable. The first is about life in general. Jesus told the people the Parable “because he was near Jerusalem and they thought that the Kingdom of God would appear there immediately.” The Parable of the Coins was given to help people know why the Kingdom of God wasn’t going to appear immediately, or, rather, how the Kingdom-among-them, as it awaits fulfillment, is a place in which people are advancing or growing the kingdom by investing the King’s gifts. How important this point is for us to grasp: that the time we have is a time of investing for the Kingdom! The second introductory point concerns the setting of the story, which involves history known very well to Jesus’ listeners but not to people today. Jesus was employing the well-known story of how after King Herod the Great’s death — the Herod who sought to kill him as an infant — Herod’s kingdom was divided into three parts, but each needed to go to Rome to be confirmed by the emperor in the kingship. The king of Judah, Herod Archelaus, went to Rome, but the people sent a delegation saying that they didn’t want him as king. The emperor confirmed him without the title king — he named him tetrarch — and upon the return, Archelaus executed those who didn’t want him to be king. In this month of November, in which we meditate on death and judgment and as we prepare for the Solemnity of Christ the King on Sunday, there’s a functional spiritual equivalent for those who don’t want to accept Christ as King. He doesn’t punish or slay them because in one sense he doesn’t have to: they’re already spiritually dead because they’re not drawing their life from him.
• Let’s get into the heart of the Parable and what Jesus is teaching. Jesus gives each of the ten servants a treasure of a gold coin. The coin is actually a Mina, which is one-sixtieth of a Talent. Since a talent was 6,000 days wages, a Mina is 100 days wages or a third of a year’s salary. For someone making $30,000 a year about $10,000: not an enormous sum but substantial enough. Those entrusted by the King with this Mina make different yields: the first one makes ten, the second five, and the last just conceals the coin in a handkerchief. We don’t know what the other seven did. We see the incredible reward given to those who proved themselves trustworthy in these little matters. The one who made ten — about $100,000, or just over three years’  work — was entrusted with ten cities and the one who made five with five cities. But then in this parable as well as in St. Matthew’s Parable of the Talents, we encounter someone who out of fear refused to invest the coin. In the latter, the Master called the one who buried the talent a “wicked, lazy servant.” Today the king says, “With your own words I shall condemn you, you wicked servant.” (It would have been interesting if Jesus had given us the example of a servant who had tried to make a profit but had actually lost money. My hunch is that the King and Master would have treated that servant rather well, since that might have been a result of bad luck or bad training. He may have been an incompetent servant or an unfortunate one, but he wouldn’t have been lazy and wicked. The Lord is not necessarily asking us to be successful, but he certainly is asking us to make the effort). In today’s case of the wicked servant, the lazy servant, his problem was his fear. “I was afraid of you, because you are a demanding man; you take up what you did not lay down and you harvest what you did not plant” and for that reason he kept it in a handkerchief. His fear lead to his laziness and wickedness.
• Jesus, on the other hand, is encouraging us not to be afraid to take risks in investing what he’s given us. He has made us in his image and we see in the Parable that God reaps where he doesn’t sow, taking the risk even of giving us freedom. He wants us to do the same. If fear cripples us, it is not of God. We need to have the courage to put all that God has given us at the service of him and others, not comparing ourselves to those who are making more or less, just doing the best we can. The reality is, from God’s perspective, that when we get to the most important talents or gold coin involved in life, it seems that it’s impossible not to “make a profit” if we actually make the effort to “trade” with it in life. The most important talent of all is God himself. We have the ability to pray to him and be guided each day, to enter into his life in the Sacraments, to enflesh his word in Sacred Scripture, to be strengthened by his Body the Church (the communion of saints in heaven, the presence of a family of faith here on earth, and the instruction of the magisterium), and to serve him in others. If we make the effort here, we will bear dividends. Jesus promised us about prayer that the one who seeks finds, the one who asks receives, and the one who knocks has the door opened. We could say that the one who invests God spiritually reaps a spiritual windfall. But we have to invest his gifts. The more we invest, the more we receive God’s guidance, the more we really allow him to transform us in sacramental encounters, the more we insert ourselves into the communion of holiness and charity, the more fruit we’ll bear.
• The first reading and the Psalm help us to learn how to invest the gift of our time in the most important “market” of all. They all concern prayer, and above all the most important form of prayer which is praise, adoration and blessing. Many times when we think of prayer we think first or sometimes exclusively about prayer of petition and intercession, asking God for things for ourselves or for others. But this is just a small part of prayer. We occasionally think about prayers of contrition, such as when we cry out, “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.” As we approach the Feast of Thanksgiving next week, we can recall the importance of prayers of gratitude. The most important part of prayer, however, is prayer of praise, because in that type of prayer we’re essentially telling God how much we love him without any direct reference to ourselves. Prayer of Praise is the most pure form of prayer because it’s focused essentially on God. In the Book of Revelation, we see what St. John witnessed in his vision when he looked through the open door of heaven and was shown what would happen. He saw God on his throne not appearing like a man but shining in complete radiance, sparkling like jasper, carnelian and an emerald halo. Around his throne were 24 elders, who could represent the 12 major prophets and 12 apostles, or 12 tribes and 12 gentiles, but who represent basically everyone in heaven. Then there was a vision of the “four living creatures” with eyes in front and back for the beatific vision, seeing God from all angles. The first resembled a lion, the second an ox, the third had the face like a man and the fourth looked like an eagle in flight. These have been seen on the one hand as the pinnacle of creation — the lion is the king of beasts, the ox the sum of sacrifices, the eagle the lord of the air, and the human person, the summit of all of creation — or, taking from St. Irenaeus’ second century reflections, the four Gospel writers, Mark (the lion, because he begins with Jesus’ royal proclamation as the Son of David and son of God), Luke (the ox because of the presence of ox and ass at Jesus’ birth), John (the eagle because of the soaring theology in his Gospel) and Matthew (the man with the face of an angel, because of his focus on Jesus as the Son of Man and all of the angels presence from the Nativity scene to the Garden of Gethsemane in his Gospel). I prefer the latter interpretation. We see that “whenever the four living creatures give glory and honor” to God, exclaiming, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty,” the 24 elders all fall down before him, worship him, throw down their crowns and say, “Worthy are you, Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you have created all things, and by your will they came to be and were made.” St. John saw the Gospel writers praising God and then all the Jews and Gentiles, all the prophets and apostles, joined in that adoration and blessing. It’s key for us to invest the gold coin of this type of praise and adoration of the Lord. The Gospels still proclaim God’s glory and honor and power. We normally respond to them saying, “Thanks be to God,” and “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ,” and “Alleluia!,” which means, “Praise the Lord.” But sometimes those words come off our lips without the wonder and enthusiasm that doubtless marks the four living creatures and the 24 elders. We sing the “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts,” but without the passion and piety of the angels. Many of us don’t invest ourselves in this the way those on fire with love of God do, which is one of the reasons why our prayer, our assistance at Mass, our reception of Confession, our belonging to the Church, our reading of the Word of God, our service to God’s people do not bear as much fruit in us as they do in some others especially in the saints. In response to the first reading, the last Psalm in the Psalter not only tells us how to praise God with all the instruments we have, but helps us to do so as we say the words: “Praise the Lord in his sanctuary, praise him in the firmament of his strength, praise him for his mighty deeds, praise him for his sovereign majesty. Praise him with the blast of the trumpet, praise him with lyre and harp, praise him with timbrel and dance, praise him with strings and pipe. Praise him with sounding cymbals, praise him with clanging cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Alleluia.” One of the most important ways for us to invest ourselves more in the praise of God is actually to use the words of this Psalm, to use the words of the four living creatures, to use the phrases from the 24 elders. The Psalm and the words of Revelation teach us how to praise and worship God, how to enter more intimately into the very life of heaven, which is the most lasting investment of all, and prepares us for eternity.
• Today at Mass we listen anew to the four living creatures who have spoken to us of Christ, who is worthy of all praise. The liturgy of the Word leads to the liturgy of the Eucharist where together with them we will pray, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Let us fall down with all the elders and say to God, “Worthy are you to receive glory and honor and power!” Worthy are you to receive praise in your sanctuary, in the firmament of your strength, for your mighty deeds and sovereign majesty, with the blast of the trumpet, with lyre and harp, timbrel and dance, strings and pipe, and clanging cymbals! Let not only everything that has breath praise the Lord, but let us use all our breath to praise him. Let us invest this Mass in such a way that Jesus will say to us, “Well done, good servant!,” and give us not ten cities but the celestial Jerusalem!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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