Homily: 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

Readings: Prv 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31; Ps 128; 1 Thes 5:1-6; Mt 25:14-30

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When I was a boy, my dad would "recruit" me (that was the word the Colonel used) to spend Saturday mornings with him as he made things in his home workshop. Carpentry was his hobby, and he was good at it. I ended up doing little more than handing him tools or holding boards while he cut them -- useful but not very fulfilling work, at least not for me. I’d rather been out with my friends.

But his real reason for having me join him was to talk with me about life, and to listen to what I thought about the important things. Now the average 10-year-old boy – and that was me – didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about life’s great mysteries, and so I did much more listening than talking.

I recall one morning; he was making a wooden support, kind of a large plaque, on which to hang a ship’s bell someone had given him. The bell was very old and pretty cool. He wanted to hang it by the front door. While we were making it, he said, “You know, son, this bell, like every bell, can sound only a single note. No matter how loud or soft, when it rings, it rings the same note.”

Then he added, “A lot of people are like that. They play just one note, because they’re so focused on just one thing: themselves. And they miss all the wonders, and all the others, God has placed around and in their lives.” 

That thought has never really left me, and it popped into my aging brain the other day as I thought today’s readings.

We first heard, from the Book of Proverbs, a beautiful description of the worthy wife and all that she does. Indeed, like a carillon, she can ring a lot of different bells, all to bring about good and not evil.

And we celebrate her not simply for what she does, but for who she is. Her actions are driven by the love that resides within her. It is through that love, the reality of Her interior being, that we see its manifestation in her actions, in her love toward others. Her life, then, becomes an extension of herself as she reaches out to others, to her family, to the poor, all done for God’s glory. Yes, indeed, “the woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”

Just as the faithful woman is praised, we encounter much the same in our Responsorial Psalm, this time aimed at the faithful man. Like the woman, the man of faith rings a lot of different bells, but they blend together into a beautiful hymn of praise. His wife, a fruitful vine; his children, olive plants around his table. As our family sat down to dinner, I sometimes called our children, “my little olive plants.” For some reason they took offense to that. I guess they hadn’t yet learned about metaphors.

But anyway, as the faithful man walks in God’s ways, he is blessed because he, too, fears the Lord. This Biblical fear of the Lord is really nothing more than an acceptance of reality, of God’s greatness. It’s the overwhelming sense of awe, of reverence, the awareness that everything comes from God, and demands our thanksgiving.

Then, in our second reading, we again encounter fear; although here it’s unstated, it’s still very present. St. Paul encourages the good Christians of Thessalonica to “stay alert and sober” because the “day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” Yes, God’s judgment can engender fear in some hearts, specifically those unprepared to face Him.

As St. Paul prophetically reminds us, the worldly ones, the politicians and others, try to sooth us with their bell and its single note of “peace and security” – while we, the uninformed, uninitiated one, look out into the world and see something very different. But even then, we should never allow that other kind of fear, a fear of the world, to enter our hearts and rule us. For it, too, is like that solitary bell, that sounds just one note.

We lived in Germany for a while when I was about seven or eight. One day as Mom and I walked to the local delicatessen, we heard the deep sonorous tone of a bell ringing from a local Lutheran church.

You know, “BONG!” And every ten seconds or so, it would ring again, another “BONG!”

Eventually, I asked, “What’s that sound, Mom? It’s kinda scary.” Her response, “Son, it’s a bell, for a funeral. It’s the sound of death.” Well, that certainly didn’t cheer me up.

But I think, in many hearts, it’s really the sound of fear. Perhaps, as they approach their own individual “day of the Lord” they fear that, in St. Paul’s words, “they will not escape.” How sad for them. And we see that sadness, that fear, in Jesus’ parable of the talents.

The talent Jesus speaks of is really a large sum of money – someone with five or more talents of gold would be today’s millionaire; so, in the most literal sense, the master is a very wealthy man.

But in the parable, the talents become interior, soul-bound treasures. And the master? He is God. We encounter God investing in each human person with specific and very personal gifts. He sees and knows each of us so very differently. These talents, each gift, is meant to be accepted as precious, not to be compared with what others have received. You see, brothers and sisters, God knows and loves each of us as if no one else existed.

The master, then, with complete trust, turned over all his property to his servants. One received five, one two, and the third, one. The master invested in each of them, that they increase those gifts with interest. Two didn’t hesitate. They went out, engaged the world, and traded well, fulfilling the master’s wishes.

The third, the fearful one, knowing he’d been given less, unwilling to confront reality, unwilling to grow, just buries his personhood in a hole in the ground. Consumed by his fears, striving only to ensure his own survival, instead he literally digs his own grave. As I think of him, I recall that bell in Heidelberg, sounding its single note of fear.

Jesus understood the disabling power of fear, for how often does He tell us: “Be not afraid.” Jesus is a true rejector of the status quo. He wants us to grow, and not allow worldly fears to hold us back.

The tragedy of the third servant is that, out of fear, he hid what had been entrusted to him, even though he had the ability to use it well. Because he did nothing, he never changed, never grew. We learn far more by doing, even if we encounter failure along the way. God has graced each of us in some way, to serve both Him and others. If we hide what has been given us, others are deprived.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, the English Jesuit poet, wrote a beautiful poem, "As Kingfishers Catch Fire," and in it there’s this amazing line:

“…the just man justices;

Keeps grace: that keeps all their goings graces.”

Yes, we keep and nurture God’s grace which keeps all our goings graces. What an ordaining thought: all our goings, all our doings, are graces, because of the graces within.

The parable has that one strong message. Jesus hopes to move us, to form us interiorly as the woman of Proverbs was formed interiorly. She lives, as she knows and receives herself to be, and we are called to the same interior change – not just to do things differently, but to be something completely different, to undergo conversion.

Hopkins ends his poem, showing how we are called to act in God’s eye, what in God’s eye we are.

“…for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men’s faces.”

We don’t put on Jesus as we’d put on an item of clothing. No, He invests Himself in us and we repay Him through what we have become in our hearts. Jesus Christ has buried Himself in us that we might continually give Him flesh. God is ever in-fleshing with divine love, as an eternal dressing of humanity, always striving to present Himself to the world through us.

Sisters and brothers, we are called to be Jesus Christ to all whom we encounter, fearlessly ringing a thousand different, joyful bells. Then, at the time of judgment, won’t it be wonderful to hear those words: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”