by Fr. Tommy Lane
Jesus told stories that we call parables to make a point. When the parable is about people, we compare ourselves with the people in the parable to see where we stand. In today’s Gospel, we heard Jesus tell a parable about a man going on a journey entrusting talents to his servants before he went away and, on his return, settling his accounts with those servants (Matt 25:14-30). Jesus is the man who went on the journey to heaven at his ascension and we are the servants who have been given the talents of graces and blessings and gifts from heaven while we await meeting Jesus at the end of our lives to give an account of how we traded with what he has given us.
The first two servants in the parable did well with the heavenly gifts they had received but the third servant let himself and God down. Why? He said, “out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground.” (Matt 25:25) He allowed himself to be dominated by fear. Fear controlled his life. He hid his talent but the reason he hid his talent was because of fear. In the spiritual life, we need to move beyond fear to love. In the first letter of John we read:
There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love. We love because he [Jesus] first loved us. (1 John 4:18)
The other two servants in the parable had moved from fear to love and as a result were able to double their talents. The third servant was still stuck in fear. The great saint Padre Pio, the year following his ordination as a priest, was assailed by fear over whether he had properly confessed sins. One of the friars gave Padre Pio spiritual advice that we read in the biography of Padre Pio by Bernard Ruffin:
Padre Benedetto frequently had to remind Padre Pio that God is gracious. “The fear of the sins that you have committed is illusory and a torment caused by the devil,” he counseled. “Let go, once and for all, and believe that Jesus is not the cruel taskmaster that you describe, but, instead, the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world and intercedes for our good with ineffable groans.” (Padre Pio: The True Story, Revised and Expanded, 3rd Edition p71)
There are good living people in every parish whose spiritual life is stifled because of fear and as a result are not reaching their spiritual potential. The advice from Padre Benedetto to Padre Pio is good advice for all good living people who are restrained by fear:
Padre Benedetto frequently had to remind Padre Pio that God is gracious. “The fear of the sins that you have committed is illusory and a torment caused by the devil,” he counseled. “Let go, once and for all, and believe that Jesus is not the cruel taskmaster that you describe, but, instead, the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world and intercedes for our good with ineffable groans.”
St. Thérèse of Lisieux wrote in her autobiography, “My nature is such that fear makes me shrink, while, under love’s sweet rule, I not only advance—I fly.” (Chapter 8 on her Profession) The third servant in the parable shrank, but the first two servants flew. The first reading today (Prov 31) was deliberately chosen to pair with today’s Gospel because the wife in the first reading is an example of a servant in the parable doubling talents. To use the language of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, she is a flying wife! The Lord wants us all to fly spiritually. He tells us so himself in John 10: I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly (John 10:10). So how do we have this abundant spiritual life? How do we double our spiritual talents? Pope John Paul II wrote in an apostolic letter in 2001 that the Christian life should be distinguished by prayer. (Novo Millennio Ineunte 32) A contemporary French spiritual writer that I like, Jacques Philippe, commented on Pope John Paul’s statement on the centrality of prayer for our Christian life as follows:
Another statement of
the Pope’s which I find very true and very important is that prayer
is “the secret of a truly vital Christianity, which has no reason to
fear the future.” Prayer enables us to draw from God a life that is
ever new, to let ourselves be continually reborn and renewed.
Whatever our trials and disappointments, harsh situations, failures,
and faults, prayer makes us rediscover enough strength and hope to
take up our lives again with total confidence in the future. This is
something that is really necessary today!
So, to use the words of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, prayer makes us fly spiritually! I would like to repeat again from Philippe:
Prayer is “the secret of a truly vital Christianity, which has no reason to fear the future.” Prayer enables us to draw from God a life that is ever new, to let ourselves be continually reborn and renewed. Whatever our trials and disappointments, harsh situations, failures, and faults, prayer makes us rediscover enough strength and hope to take up our lives again with total confidence in the future.
In other words, whatever comes our way, prayer helps us to double our spiritual talents. I conclude with the words from the first letter of John:
There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love. We love because he [Jesus] first loved us. (1 John 4:18)
© Fr. Tommy Lane 2023
This homily was delivered in a parish in Ireland.
More Homilies for the Thirty-Third Sunday of Year A
Doubling our talents in loving relationship with our heavenly Father 2020
Now is an important and exciting time to double the talents 2011
Doubling talents: growing in virtue 2008