This Sunday’s Gospel really fascinated me. I get the whole thing about using your talents to build up the kingdom, but it is the response the third guy got that caught my attention when the Lord said, “You should have put my money in the bank and I would have been able to collect it with interest. “ That got me thinking, is there a way to simply deposit your gifts in a bank and that will please God? It seems to me there must be an easy way that we could take, so what is the bank? But I thought more on it, and read a little closer, and saw that actually his master is calling his lie. This servant is pretty bold. First he calls his master a thief, ie the gathering where you did not sow part since that is what a thief does, takes something for nothing. Then tells him he was afraid because since the master was like that, it is his fault that he didn’t do anything with the talent. The part about the bank was merely saying if the servant really believed that about the master and he was so afraid, then he would have done that. The master is pointing out that the problem is not himself, but the servant, he is a wicked and lazy servant, that is the problem. It is interesting that with the servants who did their job there is not much to say, “You gave me this and therefore I did this,” and, “Well done.” But with the last servant there is a long speech, blah blah blah, justification for his action. It sounds like a political speech about why we are seriously over budget. It seems to me when I stand before God, my excuses are going to sound pretty lame, as does the man’s today. There will be no getting away with something because we are a really good talker. There will be the facts, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and judgement and that is that. Have you ever had such a good excuse in your head about why you shouldn’t be able to do something and then you said it out loud to some honest person and it sounded pretty lame? I remember I was talking with a few people when I was in seminary and one of my friend’s fiancé was with him. We were talking about fasting and I said I stopped fasting because it makes me grumpy. His lovely fiancé took me to task and told me that was a lame excuse because I could make the sacrifice to be nice. At the end of it all I felt like a wuss and that I had my lame excuse torn from me. One day we will face the all-knowing God and our excuses will not cut it. No amount of fast talking or slow talking accusation of how God has failed us will work. The guilt will be all ours. Isn’t that exciting? The way to really prevent this from happening is to read the Bible often and each time you read a part ask the question, “How does this apply to me in my life? What are you calling me to, God? How do you want to perfect me, God?
What is our purpose and our task? If we don’t know that then we don’t know where to head. I don’t know if you realize this, but the slaves in the Gospel had only one task to complete. The bridesmaids, also, had only one task to complete and their doom was decided by how they completed it. What is our task? The Baltimore Catechism said that we were created to know, love and serve God and be happy with Him in this life and the next. Do we know God? We are supposed to spend all eternity with Him. What could we actually say about Him? Could we write more than a hundred word essay on Him? Have we heard Him speaking to us? We might say we don’t even care to know Him. You might even ask, “How do I get to know Him?” Well I will tell you something, as Catholics God offers us grace to know Him and we need to ask for grace, sometimes even the desire, to know Him. Another way we can know God is every time we open Scripture we can ask the question, “What do you want teach me?” or, “What is this Scripture saying to me?” Imagine saying to God at the end, “I would have known you but TV got in the way,” or, “You weren’t interesting enough to know.” Did we pray to be more interested? Did we pray to know God? “Lord, it was hard to know you,” – I am afraid that this might sounds like a lame excuse and won’t work. What about love of God? In Heaven it is all about the love of God so we should pray to love Him each day. He has so much love for us but we don’t love Him. Serve Him – we are all called to serve God in the vocations of our lives. This is something to pray for because it is not easy. The capable wife in the First Reading is amazing, but the truth is, we can all serve like her if we ask for the grace. What about to be happy with Him? How many of us look for our happiness from God? We should pray for this gift. We have been warned to come back to our purpose and ask for the grace to live our lives to the fullest.
I would like to give each of you a moment right now to ask for the grace of what you need to live your life in the way God is calling you. What do you need right now? What obstacles does God want you to overcome or remove to keep your heart ready? Ask and you shall receive, knock and it will be opened to you.