Making the Wisest Investments of the Talents Given Us By God, 33rd Sunday (A), November 15, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
November 15, 2020
Prov 31:10-13.19-20.30-31, Ps 128, 1 Thess 5:1-6, Mt 25:14-30

To listen to a recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

Every November, the Church has us focus our attention on the four last things — death, judgment, heaven and hell — so that we might be always prepared for the first two, enter into the third and avoid the fourth. This Sunday is no exception. In the second reading, St. Paul tells us, as he told the Christians in Thessalonika, that “the day of the Lord” — the day of our death or of the end of the world, whichever comes first  — “will come like a thief in the night … as labor pains upon a pregnant woman.” An expectant mother never knows for sure when contractions will start. Many women —like the worthy wives praised by the Book of Proverbs in today’s first reading — prepare a bag of necessary items for the hospital in mid-pregnancy in case the contractions come prematurely so that they’re ready to go to the hospital at a moment’s notice. St. Paul says we need to prepare in the same way for the contractions of death that lead us from the womb of this world to the next dimension of life. Death can come when we least expect it. It could come for some or all of us as fast as today. This reality scares some people, because they doubt they’ll be ready, much like students who don’t study regularly fear flunking a pop quiz. But St. Paul calls the Thessalonians and us not to be afraid by telling us what we need to do. “You, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness for that day to overtake you like a thief,” he tells us. We know it’s coming. Therefore he reminds and exhorts us, “You are all children of light and children of the day… So let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us stay alert and sober.” He tells us always to have what we need ready, so that we might go with joy to the Father’s house. The question for us is: What do we need to do to be ready, what do we have to have in our “go bag” so as not to be caught off-guard when the labor pains for eternal life commence?

In the Gospel, Jesus answers that question and tells us what we need to have in that travel sack. He gives us a parable about how we are to be judged and how we are to prepare for it. But in doing so, as he often does, Jesus tells us as well so much about who we are in God’s eyes, where we fit into His plans, and how we should live. The entire history of the world and the vocation of each of us is found in this short story.

It’s called the Parable of the Talents. A rich man going on a journey called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them, each according to his capacity: to one he gave five talents, another two, and the third one. On the Master’s return, the one who had received five gave him ten back; the one who received two likewise doubled it and gave him four back; but the one who had received one buried the talent and just gave him back the one at the end.

In our egalitarian culture, we can get lost in the numbers five, two, and one, and think that they’re more important than they are. The main point is that gives to “each according to his ability,” he knows what we can handle, and he’ll judge us not according to quantity but according to what we’ve done with that ability in relation to what’s been given. Some of us can likewise get a lost by the number “one” as if someone would not have been able to do much with so little, or as if the “one” were just one valuable coin that we might easily lose if we tried to invest it. We have to remember, however, that by the word “talent” Jesus was referring to a measurement of weight. One talent of silver was equal to 6,000 days wages or about 20 years of work for someone working six days a week; in today’s money, if someone made $100 per day, a talent would be worth $600,000, and someone can do a lot with that much to invest! Notice what those who had received the five talents ($3 million) and two ($1.2 million) did with what they received. They “immediately went out” and started to make it grow. The one who had received the one, however, buried that huge weight of silver out of fear. Rather than sensing the trust given to him by the Master, he feared him, thinking he was demanding, cruel, and tyrannical, and he failed to bear any fruit from this gift. His behavior described the way so many of the Scribes and Pharisees in Jesus’ day had received the talent of the Covenant and of divine revelation: they buried it out of fear, or they surrounded it with so many human restrictions, because they didn’t want to risk breaking it. This take-away is that what’s important is not so much what we’ve received, but how much effort we’ve given in response to what we’ve received. Whatever we have, we’re called to use that for the kingdom. The greatest talents of all we’ve received are not our ability to sing or play musical instruments, to play sports, to make friendships easily, or even to think or speak. The greatest talents are spiritual: the gift of Baptism, the Eucharist, Confirmation, Confession, Marriage or Holy Orders; the gift the Word of God, the opportunity for charity, the Cross, the intercession of the saints; in short, the talent of our whole relationship with God. We’re called to invest these gifts. Many of the most successful people on earth are not the most talented but the ones who have maximally responded to their gifts. This is also true spiritually.

There are a few lessons from the parable to teach us how to live.

We see first that he gave to everyone “according to his ability.” Many have asked why God doesn’t just give everyone five talents, why he seems to play favorites. The simple answer is that if God did give everyone the same, there would be no real reason why we would have to share the gifts he’s given us with others. The fact that he has endowed some people with more in one respect than others is so that they can have the opportunity to use that gift for others’ betterment. We shouldn’t respond with envy but gratitude. And we should use the gifts we have, because God gives to each person lavishly: even the one who received one talent received a fortune. We might not be as smart as Einstein, or as brave as many of our veterans, or as holy as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, but he has given us all huge sums. None of us is a pauper in the endowment category.

That brings us to the second part of the parable: What God wants us to do with the gifts he’s given lavishly to each of us. He gives us great responsibilities for which he will hold us accountable. The Lord calls us to emulate the first two servants, who used their talents to make a profit. They invested them. With the same enthusiasm and savvy with which a young person on Wall Street tries to make money grow, God wants us to invest the gifts he has given us so that we might make a fitting return to him whenever he comes to check our accounts. The first two servants, like most entrepreneurs, were risk-takers, capable of making calculated gambles to achieve a high yield. They were not afraid, because they knew that the Master trusted them enough to give them these responsibilities. They desired to respond as good stewards do. They wanted to make the master proud. In increasing his fortune, they knew they would be thereby be increasing theirs, but they were focused on the Master first. The third person in the parable had none of these qualities. Rather than being industrious, the master calls him “lazy.” Instead of being “good and trustworthy,” he was deemed “worthless.” In lieu of looking at the master as “generous,” he looked at him as “harsh.” Instead of taking a risk due to the Master’s trust, he says he was “afraid.” Rather than trying to imitate the Master, who “reaped where he did not sow” and “gathered where he did not scatter,” he simply “buried the talent” and presented it back to him when he came. And so, rather than “enter into the joy of [his] Master,” he was thrown out into the “outer darkness” where there was “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

The crucial application that the Lord wants us to make today is to determine, from his perspective, whether we have been like the first two servants or like the third. If Jesus were to come right now like a thief and call us to account, what would he say? Would he praise us for having used the gifts he has given us to build up his kingdom, to make his world a much better and more sacred place, to spread his salvific joy to others, or would we recognize in his presence that we’ve really buried most of his gifts, especially his spiritual ones? Have we responded to the incredible trust the Lord has shown us in his lavish blessings as a motivation to do good works to the glory of our heavenly Father (cf. Mt 5:16) or have we feared his judgment and done nothing?  We must ponder these questions because the fact is that there are many Christians who, out of fear or a false sense of humility, bury their gifts “under a bushel basket” (Mt 5:15-16). They never take a risk. They strive not to “lose the state of grace,” not to commit any mortal sins, not to set bad example, not to make any mistakes, but they don’t examine adequately whether they’re committing sins of omission, whether they are failing to do the good that God wants. Rather than make the world a better place, their goal is simply not to harm it or to leave it as they found it. They believe there’s very little they can do to help build up God’s kingdom through the Church, so they deem themselves “worthless” and as a result do nothing. But these are all temptations of the devil to which they’ve succumbed. They haven’t grown, because the only way one grows in faith, hope and love is through acts of faith, hope and love (with the help of God’s grace) and they having taken the risk to act. If that’s been our approach or attitude until now, God wants us to begin to make up for lost time and start to trade on the talents he’s given us for our good, for others’ good and for his glory.

The third point is how we are supposed to invest the talents God has given us. If we were entrusted with $600,000 today, the Master would not want us just to put it in a checking account with no interest. He’d want us to put it in a place — like stocks, bonds, mutual funds, properties, and other investments — where it could grow. Spiritually he wants us to be just as wise. How do we invest spiritually? Pope Francis answered that question decisively in his homily this morning in St. Peter’s Basilica as he celebrated Mass on this Fourth World Day of the Poor. The Holy Father commented, “The master tells the faithless servant: ‘You ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest’ (v. 27).” And he asked: “Who are the ‘bankers’ who can provide us with long-term interest?,” answering, “They are the poor. Do not forget: the poor are at the heart of the Gospel; we cannot understand the Gospel without the poor. The poor are like Jesus himself, who, though rich, emptied himself, made himself poor, even taking sin upon himself: the worst kind of poverty. The poor guarantee us an eternal income. Even now they help us become rich in love. For the worst kind of poverty needing to be combatted is our poverty of love. … The Book of Proverbs praises the woman who is rich in love, whose value is greater than that of pearls. We are told to imitate that woman who ‘opens her hand to the poor’ (Prov 31:20): that is the great richness of this woman.”

We can conclude that the poor have become our investors. They help us to become rich when we empty ourselves to care for them with the corporal and the spiritual acts of mercy. Only what is given to them can fit through the eye of the needle. At the end of the Parable, the pope says we see a glimpse of the end of life: “Some will be wealthy, while others, who had plenty and wasted their lives, will be poor. At the end of our lives, then, the truth will be revealed. The pretense of this world will fade, with its notion that success, power and money give life meaning, whereas love – the love we have given – will be revealed as true riches. Those things will fall, yet love will emerge. A great Father of the Church [Saint John Chrysostom] wrote: ‘As for this life, when death comes and the theatre is deserted, when all remove their masks of wealth or of poverty and depart hence, judged only by their works, they will be seen for what they are: some truly rich, others poor.’” Pope Francis concludes by saying, “If we do not want to live life poorly, let us ask for the grace to see Jesus in the poor, to serve Jesus in the poor.” That is the path to grow the Master’s kingdom and to enter into it more fully now and in eternity.

The Lord has given us individually so much and the Lord has given us collectively so much more to build up his kingdom. He has done it because he has confidence in us, trusting us with the carrying out of this saving work in this part of his vineyard and beyond it. Whether up until now we have been faithful in all these matters or asleep, now is the time to respond to God’s grace to begin to invest the treasures he’s given us so as to help him save the world. If we do so, if we inspire each other in this way, then there’s no reason for us ever to fear death as a “thief in the night” or to be terrified of judgment; for when the Lord returns we will be able to present to the Lord the ways that the gifts he’s given us have grown in us and through in in the lives of others and he will be able to say to each the words he created our ears to hear, “Well done, good and trustworthy servant; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into your Master’s joy.” Today Jesus gives us the treasure of his word today and the even greater gift of his Body and Blood. Let us go out immediately after this Mass like the one who received five talents to invest it by truly loving and serving others, especially those in greatest need, who will help us to become rich in what alone matters, as we see to enrich them with the enormous wealth of God’s love.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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