Dear Parish Family,

There is a temptation in our practice of Christian faith to embrace a ‘spirituality of passivity’. Some ‘good Christians’ dream of a trouble free life as the measure of sanctity. The Gospel of today with the parable of Talents just goes counter to these ways of thinking. Note that it is money (yes money!) that the master entrusts to his various servants, different amounts according to varying abilities.  Two servants realize that the master wants a return on his capital, so they invest it and each double it.  The master does not expect to get the same sum back from these two because they started with different amounts.  But they both received the exact same praise because they both gave him a hundred per cent return. 

The servant of least ability, on the other hand, buried the money for fear of losing it.  Instead of praising him for being conservative, the master is outraged.  If you entrusted your retirement nest egg to a stockbroker, and years later it had not grown at all, would you be happy? The master was angry because the servant had allowed fear to paralyze him.  So afraid was he of losing money that he did not even take the very modest risk of depositing the money in the bank. 

The Lord has entrusted lots of things to us: money, natural talents, spiritual gifts, the saving truth of the Gospel.  He expects us not just to conserve these things but to grow them.  In the last supper discourse (John 15) he speaks of the disciples as bearing much fruit.  In the Parable of the Sower and the Seed he speaks of grain that bear 30, 60, and 100 fold.  Whatever labor we are involved in–economic, family, apostolic–the goal should be to develop, increase, and grow what God has given us, for his honor and glory. This inevitably involves taking risks.  It means not letting the fear of failure and ridicule stop us from pursuing success. 

One of the greatest Catholic thinkers of the 20^th century was a Swiss priest named Hans Urs von Balthasar.  He once pointed out that one of the most frequently used words in the book of Acts was the Greek word parrhesia, meaning cheerful boldness in the face of danger or opposition.  Without such boldness, Christianity would have stalled in Palestine.  It never would have made it to Antioch, Greece, and Rome. Faithfulness to God means having the courage to take bold initiatives, in pastoral life, family life, and business, to be creative, even entrepreneurial, to express our gratitude to God for all that He has given us by making it grow.

The man in the parable represents Christ himself, the servants are the disciples and the talents are the gifts that Jesus entrusts to them. These gifts, in addition to their natural qualities, thus represent the riches that the Lord Jesus has bequeathed to us as a legacy, so that we may make them productive: his Word, deposited in the Holy Gospel; Baptism, which renews us in the Holy Spirit; prayer the "Our Father" that we raise to God as his children, united in the Son; his forgiveness, which he commanded be offered to all; the Sacrament of his Body sacrificed and his Blood poured out; in a word: the Kingdom of God, which is God himself, present and alive in our midst. The parable places a greater emphasis on the good fruits brought by the disciples who, happy with the gift they received, did not keep it hidden with fear and jealousy but made it profitable by sharing it and partaking in it. Yes, what Christ has given us is multiplied in its giving!

Fr. Tom Kunnel C.O.