Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, November 18, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Thirty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, A, Vigil
November 18, 2023

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday as he teaches us about human life and death, about the gifts he’s given us and how he wants us to use them, about how we are to be judged at the end of our life, how we are to prepare for that final exam, and what the reward will be for our acing it. In some ways, the history of the world, the whole arc of our life, and the vocation God has given us are all found in Jesus’ short story.
• It’s called the Parable of the Talents. Most of us know it. A rich man going on a journey calls in his servants and entrusts his possessions to them: to one he gave five talents, another two, and the third one. On the man’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. The first two receive the same reward. The Master says, “Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your Master’s joy.” The one who returned the buried talent, however, received a totally different response. The Master called him “wicked and lazy,” asked why he didn’t at least put it in the bank to gain interest, had the talent taken from him and given to the one with ten, and then had him thrown into the outer darkness, which was an image of the self-alienation where God’s light doesn’t shine we call hell. Whole retreats can be preached on the elements of this parable, but let’s highlight the bigger points.
• Sometimes, in our egalitarian culture, we can object to the fact that the Master entrusted his possessions disparately, according to each servant’s ability. Some can wonder whether there was far greater risk to the servant who had received one losing the little he had than those who received five and two. We have to remember, however, that the word “talent” Jesus used referred to a measurement of weight. One talent of silver was equal to 6,000 days wages or 16-and-two-thirds years of work; in today’s money, if someone made $100 per day, even someone who received one talent would have had $600,000 to invest. We see the difference in how the first two servants and the third responded to the trust of the master. Jesus says that those who had received the five talents ($3 million) and two ($1.2 million) “immediately went out” and started to make it grow. They both received a one-hundred percent return from their one-hundred percent effort and investment. It almost implies that all one had to do was try, because the conditions for investment were so favorable. The one who had received the one talent, however, buried that huge weight of silver out of fear, fear to take a risk, fear because the Master reaped where he didn’t sow and gathered where he didn’t scatter. Rather than sensing the confidence given to him by the Master, he was afraid of him, deeming him demanding, cruel, tyrannical, and as a result buried himself and his potential along with the talent. God gives to each of us “according to [our] ability,” but no matter what, each of us has been invested with much. God trusts us. And he wants us to develop his gifts. 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 God has given us all enormous gifts. None of us is a pauper in the endowment category. And the greatest talents God has given us are spiritual: the gift of Baptism, the Holy Eucharist, our Confirmation, the ability to start anew each Confession, the gifts of Marriage or Holy Orders, the Word of God, so many opportunities for charity, the Crosses with which he caresses us, the intercession of the saints, our friendship with God and our ability to turn to God in prayer, and so much more. We’re called not to waste or bury these treasures, but to invest them, because each of them contains a potential that if we even try, the parable implies, we can’t lose.
• The crucial application that the Lord wants us to make in this month of November as we ponder the last things is to determine whether we have been like the first two servants or like the third. If Jesus were to come right now as a thief in the night and call us to account, 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 the greatest spiritual ones? Have we responded to the unbelievable 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? 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 of sharing the faith, of living the faith to overflowing. 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 realize that they may be failing to do the good that God wants. They never grow, 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). Rather than make the world a better and holier place, they succumb to the devil’s temptations and make their goal simply not to harm the world or to leave it like they found it. If that’s been our attitude up until now, Jesus gives us this parable in order to provoke in us what he was trying to do with his first hearers: to have us unbury the gifts and start to use them for the purpose for which God entrusted us with them.
• I want to apply these lessons to two contexts. The first is to the World Day of the Poor, which is taking place this Sunday. Pope Francis made a powerful connection between Jesus’ Parable and the poor three years ago, when he said in a homily at St. Peter’s Basilica: “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). Who are the “bankers” who can provide us with long-term interest? They are 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.” The poor are our eternal investors. They help us to become rich when we empty ourselves to care for them. Only what is given away in love can fit through the eye of the needle. The Pope says that we see at the end of the Parable 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.”
• The second context is to the celebration of thanksgiving that we will mark on Thursday. Thanksgiving is an annual opportunity for us to reflect on all of the talents, all of the riches, all of the blessings that God and others have entrusted to us, and to turn to Him and to them and say thanks. The greatest way we say thanks is to invest the gifts of love that have been given, to be transformed by them,  and to share them lavishly with others. Thanksgiving is a day in which we think not about what we don’t have but about what we do and we celebrate those gifts at the altar with God and at the dinner table with family, friends, and, if we’re generous and wise, with the poor and those who have nowhere else to go. When it comes to our investment portfolio, thanksgiving — not just the fourth Thursday of November, but regularly — has to be our most important mutual fund, because it helps us to remember our gifts and inspires us to share them.
• 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 our part of his worldwide vineyard and beyond it. Whether up until now we have been faithful in all these matters or timidly buried his gifts, 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 and redeem our brothers and sisters one by one. If we do so, if we inspire each other in this way, then there’s no reason for us ever to fear death or 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 us in the lives of others and he will be able to say to each the words he created our ears to hear, “Well done, my good and faithful servant; you have been trustworthy in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities; Come, share your Master’s joy.” Our reward will be to share even more in God’s gifts as stewards of his saving plan. This Sunday he will bless us with the treasure of his word and the even greater gift of his Body and Blood. Let us prepare to go out immediately after Mass like the one who received five talents to invest these gifts by truly loving and serving others, especially those in greatest need, who will help us to become rich in what alone matters, as we seek to enrich them with the enormous wealth of God’s love.

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was: 

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