Called to Bear Witness to God's Love

Novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe
Feast of St Juan Diego, Seer of Guadalupe - 9th December 2014

 A sense of unworthiness is probably something most of us experience at some time or another. We may feel unworthy for a particular task, unworthy of another's trust, unworthy of another's love. And that's not surprising. We know our failings and our weaknesses better than anyone. I guess this sense of unworthiness is most apparent in the area of our relationship with God. There is awkwardness when confronted with God’s invitation. Why would God choose me? Why me? I don’t think I have it in me to respond to his call, accept his invitation and be a witness to his immense love.  But this hesitation to heed the call of discipleship may have less to do with genuine humility than it has to do with a rather selfish, narcissistic and self-serving cultural influence. We can all recognise the self-centredness of our contemporary culture, a culture that constantly believes that we are self-sufficient and that it all begins and ends with “me”. It’s a culture that makes us believe that you can’t achieve or get anything unless you work for it, or unless you deserve it, or unless you’re born with it. It’s a culture where personal merit counts for everything.

Here is the good news. And trust me, it is good news: God’s love and choice is not about personal merit. It's not all about you. You are loved and chosen in spite of the fact that you don’t deserve it. We are all that lost sheep that the shepherd goes in search of. Now... could that take the pressure off a little? Yes, it can when we come to recognise that the call of discipleship, the call to witness to the love of God is often too heavy for any man or woman. That is why it is sheer humility that recognises that we can accomplish nothing without Divine Assistance, without being propped and held up by grace itself. It is a recognition of the truth, albeit a painful one, that Christ actually doesn’t need us. It may not sound like it, but that's Good News. Why? Because none of us are capable, on our own, of fulfilling the good works that God has called us to. We can't make it on our own, and if everything relied upon else, it'd be a disaster. Instead, we need Him. We - priests and laity alike - need to turn over everything to Him, holding nothing back, and entrusting all to the Holy Spirit.

If our perpetual sense of unworthiness makes us question God’s choice, how much more could we question the choice of Juan Diego, the seer of Guadalupe, whose feast we celebrate today. Why would God grant this singular privilege of witnessing the Marian apparition to this simple Aztec peasant, a new convert to Catholicism, whose simple faith was nourished by the most basic of catechesis? In fact, Juan Diego himself was keenly aware of his unworthiness when entrusted with the mission of delivering Our Lady’s message to the bishop, “I am a nobody, I am a small rope, a tiny ladder, the tail end, a leaf.” “I beg you to entrust your message to someone more known and respected so that he will believe it. I am only a simple Indian whom you have sent as a messenger to an important person.”

Without refuting this, but recognising his humility, it was Mary who addressed him lovingly as “Juanito, Juan Dieguito”, "the most humble of my sons", "my son the least", "my little dear". “My dearest son, you must understand that there are many more noble men to whom I could have entrusted my message and yet, it is because of you that my plan will succeed.” Yes, there were certainly many other more credible, more qualified candidates to witness to our Lady’s favour. And yet it was to this “little one” that found favour in Mary’s eye.

In Juan Diego, we indeed see the example of one who has been called and chosen to bear witness to God’s love. Such love is truly gratuitous, it is unconditional and unmerited. The lesson provided in the choice of this simple witness is that a true gift or giving is not to be based on receiver’s merit or else it is a reward: It should not be based on the condition of recipient’s worthiness but of the willingness and generosity of the giver. In fact God, through our Blessed Mother, chose to grant this favour to Juan Diego, though he was unworthy of it. That in itself is testimony of the depth of God’s love.

But if the choice had nothing to do with Juan Diego, what part did he play? What part can we play in this whole divine saga of God choosing us to be his witnesses. Here is the truth, a truth that has been spelt out throughout the pages of Sacred Scripture and across the Christian centuries in the life testimonies of saints, confessors and martyrs: The act of giving always create choices or conditions: the acceptance or rejection. Receiving requires unconditional acceptance; you can have it if you will accept it. You can’t have it if you reject it. And so we have the prophets, the apostles, the saints and martyrs – they were presented with the choice of either accepting or rejecting God’s choice of them. And they chose it, as did Juan Diego.

Often, it's when we are at our lowest, when we have failed, when we are most acutely aware of our weakness, that the Lord comes to us and works his wonders. It is to the lost sheep that the Shepherd comes in search of. And it's then we have to trust in him, to launch out into deep water, knowing that it's not our strength or our talents that matter, but his. St John Chrysostom reminds us that as long as we are sheep, we overcome and, though surrounded by countless wolves, we emerge victorious; but if we turn into wolves, we are overcome, for we lose the shepherd’s help.” At every mass, we utter the act of humility when the Body of Christ is lifted up, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.” And at every mass, we witness the great miracle of his love – the Eucharist!

St Paul was undoubtedly speaking of the likes of Juan Diego, when he wrote,  “God chose what is low and despised in the world ... so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Cor 1:28,29). It takes a long time for most of us to realise our true stature before the Lord. And that is why, from time to time, God lifts up a saintly person, one like Juan Diego and invites us to hear Him say with Jesus, the Son of Mary, "I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike." Mt 11:25

I’m sure that many of you are aware that St John Paul II named Our Lady of Guadalupe, or Our Lady of the Tepeyac Hill as the ‘Star of Evangelisation.’ And the main thing for that title is because of what happened afterwards; so many conversions took place. Till that time, Christianity was seen as a foreign religion and tool at the hand of the invading colonialists. But after the apparitions to St Juan Diego, thousands of Indians began flocking everyday to the missionary centres seeking baptism. According to records, some priests had to baptise as many as six thousand people a day. This evinces that conversion is always the work of God, not that of men. We are merely poor instruments who bear witness to his Love.

Today, we continue to invoke the prayers of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Star of Evangelisation, we pray for the grace and the courage to bear witness to God’s immense love. And if there is still anyone out there who feels intimidated, who still feels fettered and weighed down by a sense of unworthiness, that we are not good enough or could never measure up to God’s demands, well let’s remember St Juan Diego – a living proof that you need not be someone important, eloquent, well-educated, talented or good at public speaking to be a witness of God’s love. The fact that you are not all these things and yet God has chosen you is proof enough of the message you’ve been commissioned to proclaim.

Advent begins with Repentance

Second Sunday of Advent Year B

The secular world has begun celebrating Christmas; if you haven’t already notice. In some malls, the tinsels and Christmas trees came up as soon as the Deepavali decorations were taken down and in some places, even before they were stored away. Yes, the store decorations have been up for some time and there are Christmas (as well as “holiday”) parties on our social agendas during the month of December. Perhaps, the only people that seems altogether insulated from this and who zealously work to resist this are the ones found in Church, especially the Parish Priest.

In spite of the festive mood, the Church obstinately seems to hold unto a wet blanket sort of a demeanour, one which deliberately tries to dampen our celebrations. Instead of a celebratory atmosphere, there is an air of austerity during this period. Everything seems toned down to the bare minimum. Take for example, the Mass during this season, we immediately note a less festive setting.  Fewer floral arrangements, if any, adorn the church.  There’s a better than fifty per cent chance you’ll hear some unfamiliar medieval sounding hymn (again, not sung in a particularly festive manner) then a Christmas carol many of us had been eagerly waiting to hear and sing since the beginning of the year.  We don’t get to sing the Gloria either during the opening Rites.  The liturgical colour for vestments is purple as in the penitential season of Lent (or a funeral). Isn’t Advent a run up to Christmas and shouldn’t it therefore be proximate preparation for this most joyous celebration of the year? Isn’t this sober mood overdone?

Changing popular customs, especially in connection with preparation for Christmas, have diminished appreciation of the Advent season. Something of a holiday mood of Christmas appears now to be anticipated in the days of the Advent season. As a result, this season has unfortunately lost in great measure the role of penitential preparation for Christmas that it once had. Advent was originally a penitential season, not a period of pre-Christmas frenzied shopping, frivolous caroling nor drunken partying. 

No, Advent is about repentance. That is why today, we hear the story of how John the Baptist went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. His ministry resonates with the call of the Prophet Isaiah, “Prepare the Way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” And this is what we are about in Advent. In Advent we are preparing for the coming of Jesus. We are preparing, in the first instance, for the coming of Jesus at Christmas. And we all enjoy making the practical preparation to celebrate the feast; we start to buy and wrap up presents. We plan Christmas dinners and parties and stock up the refrigerator with good food. And all these practical preparations are important because Christmas is an important feast and we want to celebrate it well.

But when John the Baptist tells people to “Prepare the way of the Lord” I don’t think he is expecting his listeners to go out shopping for presents! John the Baptist, who lives in the wilderness, is not thinking about decorating houses. John the Baptist, who eats locusts and wild honey, isn’t thinking about stocking up the refrigerator with food. John the Baptist, who wears camel’s hair with a leather belt isn’t thinking about fine clothes. Well what is he thinking about? John the Baptist is thinking of repentance as the essential preparation for the coming of Jesus. What would you do if you knew that Jesus was coming tomorrow? What would be on the top of your to-do-list if you knew the world was going to end this evening? I guess the last thing would be to put up your Christmas tree, right? Heading for the confessional seems pretty important, even desperately urgent.

Repentance. Let’s pause for a moment and think about this word, which is so alien to our times, so completely counter cultural. What does the word Repentance mean? Repentance means putting God in the first place in our lives and making sure that everything else finds its rightful places in our lives under God. Repentance means letting go of our own will, in order to follow the things that God wills for us. It means turning away from sin and all rebellion against God, in order to be obedient to God and to follow him in all that he wants from us. Repentance means owning up to our sin, our human frailties, our fears, our inner hurts and entrusting all these to God’s mercy and compassion. In this way we become free of sin, from fears, from hurts and they cease to have power over us. This allows us to walk in the way of God without carrying loads of baggage.

Repentance therefore is not a one time thing. It is a process that goes on for a lifetime. Little by little we orientate ourselves ever more perfectly in God’s love for us. Repentance is about returning our gaze to God, changing the direction of our life in order to face, to see and receive our coming salvation. Repentance means knowing our need of God. In turning our lives around, we come to recognise that our self-sufficiency is inadequate and that we need to cooperate with God in our own salvation.

But talk of repentance makes modern-day Christians nervous. In fact, the preaching of repentance is one of the main reasons some people stay away from the Church. We hate it when the homilies seem to hammer sin and seemed bent on making us feel guilty. We rush to assert that Jesus isn't really like that, he came out of love to help us rather than judge us. This explains why repentance is such a rarity today. It’s because many have become numbed to the voice of their conscience. So many are lost because they have lost the sense of sin. One of the most popular myths of our age is that if you can claim to be a victim, you're automatically sinless. Today, we would hide behind the disfunctionality of our childhood and society, and choose to blame someone else for our actions, rather than to face up to our own sinfulness.

But our penitence is not the penitence of those who have no hope of forgiveness, but of those who have been redeemed by the dying and rising of Jesus the Lord. Thus our penitence is life-giving and not death dealing. Penitence is not the result of a guilt-ridden neurosis but the general consequence of humble admission of responsibility. Repentance is indeed the necessary doorway to the spiritual life, the only way to begin and the only way to grow in spiritual maturity. Anything else is foolishness and self-delusion. Only repentance is brute-honest enough, and joyous enough, to bring us all the way home.

So as we continue our journey to Christmas, we need to repent of our comfortableness with  sin.  Repent of our self-centeredness, which makes Christ and His Church one of the lowest priorities in our lives. Repent of worshiping our idols of popularity, materialism and power – these have become our new religion.  Repent of our all-consuming dedication to the shallow, temporary things of this world, and of our casual attitude toward Christ and the demands he makes of us. We need to come out into the wilderness where God reforms and transforms His beloved People – on His terms and not our own. Avail yourself to the very reason Jesus came as a Child to Bethlehem: he come down to be among sinners. Yes, but he came to call us into the Kingdom of Light. So prepare the Way of the Lord!

Waiting vigilantly

First Sunday of Advent Year B

No one likes waiting, seriously. The proliferation of instant foodstuffs on supermarket shelves, speedy internet connections, online banking is evidence of it. Who likes to wait in long lines and be subjected to the humiliation of having to wait your turn? No, we simply have no time for waiting. When we are forced to wait, we believe that there is something seriously wrong with the system or the device. When an elevator takes a long to time to arrive, we give the button another series of rapid jabs. Waiting drives us crazy. So we fight it. Rushing, running, planning, speeding, doing. Instant gratification is our answer to waiting. Waiting time is wasted time, and none of us can afford to waste even a minute.  

But didn’t our parents and today’s parents still teach us how to wait patiently. They say things like – “No, not now, you can have that when you're older.” “Just wait a while and I'll get it for you.” “Wait until your birthday.” “Wait a bit, and just be patient.” “Wait, don’t open your present yet. Wait, don’t start singing Christmas carols yet. It isn’t Christmas!” But if the last example is anything to go by, waiting is a hard lesson to learn.

So what do we do when God asks us to wait? We do what we do when anyone else asks us to wait. We fight it. We rebel. When God asks us to wait we respond by doing. We transfer our busy-ness from the life of the world into the life of the Kingdom. We begin to interpret our busy-ness as being busy with the work of the Kingdom. We fight God’s call to wait because we mistakenly define waiting as worthlessness, as waste, as doing nothing. But what if we’re wrong? What if there is merit in waiting, even grace?

Advent is a time of waiting. But how are we to wait? It is important to note that this kind of waiting is not waiting passively. On the contrary, waiting for God is an active waiting. It requires not that we do nothing, but that we do only what we can do. Waiting actively means not trying to do God’s work for Him. For those who faithfully waited for God’s defining intervention in liberating Israel from its woes, God broke into the world in a new and unexpected way. The Word became flesh - that was never expected to be part of the deal. Active waiting requires profound humility – we must know our limits. We cannot set the timetable, we cannot determine the action plan, we cannot dictate the solution. Which, in turn, requires slowing down, listening and making ourselves vulnerable to God’s will and plans. Therefore, waiting makes us keep in step with God’s timing, to prepare us for what He wants to give us in life, and to sift our motives.

Active waiting requires us to do exactly what Jesus tells his disciples today, “Be on your guard, stay awake, because you never know when the time will come.” Our Church year begins with this Gospel that makes a call for vigilant waiting, since the time of the Lord’s coming is uncertain. Notice here that Christmas has a firm date, but the Lord’s coming into our life and death, into the life and consummation of the Church does not. It is as if, the Church, through the liturgical year, provides us with this constant caution and exhortation, that Advent could be at any time, at any place, and on any occasion. And so we must always be on our guard, we must always be awake, because we will never be able to predict when the Lord will come and where we must give an account of the time and opportunities that have been entrusted to us.

In today’s gospel, Jesus gives us a parable about a man who goes on a journey. He doesn’t tell his servants where he is going or when he will come home again. He leaves his servants in charge of his home and property and gives them work to do while he is away. He then leaves and his last word to his servants as he closes the front door is to be diligent and ready for his return, whenever that might be.

There is an element of danger implicit in this parable. From this and other, similar teachings of Jesus we learn that danger may come from without or within. The danger that comes from without is often represented by the darkness of night and the grim possibility that some robber, under cover of the darkness, will dig through the earthen walls of the house to steal what is inside. This is representative of the very real, destructive evil of sin in our world. The danger that comes from within is the danger of becoming lax about one's behaviour or becoming indifferent to the danger or to the master's return - perhaps becoming drunk, mistreating the other servants, or both. Whatever the source of the danger, the only effective approach is to be alert, careful - watchful. At one level, it means that we need to be watchful against our sworn enemy the devil, to guard against sin and the occasions of sin. To be watchful also means doing the work the Master has assigned us to do. Though, we may all have different responsibilities and duties, each have to be accountable to the Master over that which has been assigned to him or to her. 

We are in the time between Jesus’ first and second comings and Jesus has told us to watch and wait, doing the jobs he has given us to do. As we do unto others as he did unto us; when we give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, give clothes to the poor and visit those who are sick or in jail; as we make disciples of all nations, we are working and waiting for Christ’s return. We may not know the date, time or circumstances of his return. But one thing that we can know from the scriptures -  Jesus will return, and like the servant in the parable, his absence must not lull us into forgetting about the master and what he wants us to do, but to actively wait and be prepared for whenever that moment of his arrival might be.

So, let us wait with great expectancy and hope. The work of the kingdom of God, the work of the Master has been entrusted to you and me, his servants. And he expects us to be faithful servants. There is little point in worrying and fretting over when the master will return. Neither should we be lulled into a complacency that would dull our sense of readiness for his return. The most important concern we have is that we faithfully carry out the work he has given us to do so that when he does return he will find us faithfully working on those tasks he has given us. As faithful servants, we must “wait.” Yes, we must “wait,” for to wait is the mark of obedience, the expression of humility, and the sign of our willingness to do the Master’s will.

Who are you to Judge?

Christ the King Year A 

One of the most oft-quoted and certainly misquoted phrases of our Holy Father, must certainly be the one he made in one of his signature off-the-cuff interviews with the media, “Who am I to judge?” It was splashed in headlines across the world, with the additional commentary that Pope Francis had now given his papal approval to homosexuality. The media coverage on the recently concluded extraordinary synod of family, which hinted that the Church was on the verge of doing just this, did not help. Of course the real context of the Pope’s interview, if anyone really bothered to discover since it’s of little news value, is that the statement was made in reaction to questions about the Vatican Bank scandal, the questionable past exploits of the bank officer who was involved in the aforementioned saga and a particular clandestine gay lobby working within the Curia. The entire quotation is certainly more sedated and may not rate as something sensational enough to be published.

Here it is: “There’s a lot of talk about the gay lobby, but I’ve never seen it on the Vatican ID card. When I meet a gay person, I have to distinguish between their being gay and being part of a lobby. If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them? They shouldn’t be marginalised. The tendency is not the problem … they’re our brothers.” Now, if anyone also took the trouble to research Catholic moral teaching on the issue, they would discover that the Pope merely resonated the Church’s position on the matter – homosexual acts, just like any other acts against chastity, is sinful. But that doesn’t mean that someone who has homosexual orientation or tendency is evil. In fact, the Church advocates special pastoral care and support to be given to those who struggle with this orientation. A person with a homosexual orientation, just as someone who has a heterosexual orientation, is equally called to a Christian life of purity and chastity.

It’s funny how the phrase “who am I to judge” and its derivation, “don’t judge me,” have become an over-used defence that validates every sort of behaviour and excuses us from being accountable to moral truths. The injunction can never be an approbation of sinful behaviour. In fact, charity demands that we speak out against evil and sin, and when we do so, we are really showing love of our neighbour and a concern for their soul. In fact, it is a lack of charity when sin is ignored. But, then how do we understand Jesus when he tells us not to judge? “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not and you will not be condemned; forgive and you will be forgiven.” Well, today’s feast provides us with the answer. To judge in the manner of condemning others would be tantamount to usurping the authority of God and Christ. It is Christ who stands as Judge over us and not we who act as judges over others or even God. The divine power to judge each and every person belongs to the Son of Man.

The Church year closes with a description of Christ’s last judgment. Christ is indeed the King of the universe, as he sits triumphantly on his throne of glory, but Christ is also its Judge. We see two themes interwoven into this magnificent scene of the Final Judgment. The first and central theme is that everything we do or do not do to the least of our brethren is done or not done to him. The second theme is also found in the same place: if the first theme is the absolute criterion, then those who undergo judgment must be completely separated into right and left, eternal reward and eternal punishment. The final judgment is not just for show, where everyone will receive the same sentence of a general acquittal and all be admitted to heaven, a popularly held belief. There will be judgment and sentencing. Our actions in this life will ultimately determine our final fate – we will reap what we have sown.

But the interesting thing about this parable of judgment is that the second theme depends on the first, which provides the decisive teaching given by the entire tableau: the judging, glorious King shows his solidarity with the least of his brothers. Christ unites himself with the hungry, the thirsty, with aliens and the homeless, with the unclothed, the sick and the imprisoned. And here lies the irony, a truth that we should ponder constantly: in the most miserable of our fellow men we have already met our Judge. Therefore, today’s gospel provides the criteria by which the eschatological judge will formulate his verdict.

And the ultimate criterion of his judgment will be love, active love, overflowing into simple deeds of goodness and charity. The works of charity in regard to one's neighbour are a fundamental element of the judgment. Christ identifies himself precisely with this neighbour. The small, routine, and seemingly insignificant deeds we do to our neighbour have profound ramifications of eternal proportions for us, and upon these shall we be separated sheep from goats. From the gospel we learn that it is not by earth-shaking deeds or headline making activities. Simple and often obscure acts of love, of which anyone, at anytime, is capable, are the deeds which wield his power in time and space.

A frightening and yet challenging thought remains with us from today’s gospel: those who were condemned to eternal punishment were separated from the just, not for dastardly deeds or heinous crimes, but for the little acts of love they had neglected to do. In failing to feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned, provide consoling support to the sick, they had summarily rejected not only their king and his reign but their own inheritance of salvation as well. And certainly the failure to correct our brother when he errs must surely count as not just as being polite and non-judgmental, but really a neglect of charity. We can even hear a modern paraphrase that could sound like this, “where were you when I needed correction and direction to be led back to the path of repentance?” And so while we still enjoy the mercy of time, we can and should awaken ourselves and others to the presence of Christ’s reign and seek out the message of need in the faces of the poor, the downtrodden and the lost. In so doing, we shall discover the power of our king and establish his reign of peace and love.

Christ is not only our Judge, he is most certainly our Saviour. This is manifested in the whole messianic mission of Christ. Christ does not regard it as his mission to condemn people. He is, first of all, the one who teaches the way of salvation, and not the accuser of the guilty. The nature of divine judgment must therefore be seen in the rejection of Christ’s mission. In the presence of the Light of the World, in the presence of one who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, each one is judged by one's own deeds. Man condemns himself when he rejects the possibility of salvation offered to him. In today’s gospel, Christ offers that possibility by teaching us that acts of love would be certain path to salvation. When we refuse to love, when we ignore the needs of others, when we remain silent where we are under duty to speak, when we choose to please our brother by approving his sinful actions, we have already signed our own death warrant.

With Grace Comes Accountability

Thirty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Most people would certainly remember one of the most iconic quotes of the superhero film industry, Uncle Ben’s advise to Spiderman, “With great power comes Great responsibility.” Despite what Marvel and the movies would have us believe, this powerful quote does not come from Hollywood. Some say that the quote is attributed to Francois-Marie Arouet, or better known as Voltaire. On the other hand, I am partial to believe that the quote has a more ancient root, it must have found inspiration in the words of Jesus Christ. Wasn’t it he who said that, “to those who much is given much is required” (Luke 12:48) and who in today’s parable reemphasised that with more “talents” comes greater responsibility?

The familiar parable of the talents found in Matthew 25 is the third in the series our Lord gave his disciples at the close of his great discourse on Mt Olive. After outlining the course of events from the time of his first coming through the destruction of Jerusalem under the Roman armies and the turbulent movements that would flow through the intervening age before he came again, he closes with a word of admonition contained in one word, “watch.” To expound what that word means he has given us three parables. They describe what it means to be watching for his return. The common basic pattern that runs through the three parables is an absent Master, characters who await his coming or return and the judgment which follows. Yes, the story ends with judgment. There is an accounting to be made.

To simply dismiss the message of this parable as having to use our talents and nothing more is over-simplifying matters. This is no X-Factor or Asia’s Got Talent storyline. The theme that is often forgotten in the frequent reading and preaching of this gospel is that it reasserts God’s sovereign authority and that the Kingdom of God belongs to him and not to us. This is similar to the truth we saw in the Parable of the Wicked Tenants of the Vineyard. What we see in this parable, as with others, is that what we have really does not belong to us. Rather, it is purely and entirely a gift from God. It all belongs to God and is on loan to us. And because it is merely on loan to us, we are to be good stewards who will be asked to provide an account of how we have used these gifts on Judgment Day.

This leads us to the second point. More than anything else, the parable speaks of fidelity to the vocation and mission for which God has called us to. In modern parlance, it speaks of accountability. The story really has to do with man giving account before God. We have received such “talents” in trust and not as an absolute right, and are supposed to work with them not only for ourselves but for God. For we owe ourselves, together with all we have, to God. The unfaithful servant was judged not for failing to make as much as the other two servants. His sin was not the lack of business acumen but unfaithfulness to the task that had been entrusted to him. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta often reminds us that we shall be measured not by our success but by our faithfulness. And so, we will ultimately be judged by our fidelity to God’s intention and will, and not by our self-perceived cleverness or productivity.

Each of the servants were allocated different amounts according to their respective abilities, in other words, in a very personalised fashion, but when it came to the reward both the first and the second, who had produced unequal amounts were rewarded equally and given further responsibilities. Since all things belong to God, He has every right to dispense with them as He wishes. This provides us with the crucial lesson that we should never compare our individual lot with that of others, but be concerned with our own responsibility to work out our salvation with what each of us have received. The Little Flower, St Therese de Lisieux, too struggled with this mystery, “Why souls all did not receive the same amount of grace?” According to St Therese, God instructed her by using the metaphor of a garden, “The splendour of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.” “God's love is revealed just as much in the most simple soul who does not resist His graces as in the most sublime.” In other words, it’s not how much you possess but how faithful have you been to what had been entrusted to you that matters.

Ultimately, faithfulness to God means having the courage to take bold initiatives in every aspect of our lives, to express our gratitude to God for all that He has given us by making it grow. If we wish to be a disciple of Christ, we must take risk. Why the man who went off and buried his talents – why did he do that?  He wasn’t dishonest or unethical. He could have been lazy, but perhaps, the real reason was fear, as indicated by his excuse to the master.  He took what he felt was the safest part – no action. He felt safer to do nothing rather than take the risk of investing his talents and failing or losing it all.  His ostensible fear let him forget that the nature of the gifts entrusted to him is to produce more – it is a call to be fruitful. Genuine faithfulness must lead to fruitfulness. It is ironic, that he treats a “living” gift as if it were dead, by burying it. His actions bore no fruit, they were barren. Each day we are faced with thousands of decisions and how often do we opt to do nothing rather than taking the risk of doing something.  We worry about what others will think of us, what will happen, if we will look stupid, or if we will fail.  When we are unprepared to take risks for Christ, our lives count for nothing.

To risk means to live dangerously! To risk means to love dangerously! C.S. Lewis wrote, "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements, lock it up safe in the casket or the coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken, it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell."

When the master finally returns, there will be an accounting of his resources, of what he had entrusted to each servant. To each of us has been given a certain amount of time, a certain amount of opportunities, a certain amount of gift and graces and a certain amount of talent. At the Final Judgment, God will hold us all accountable. For the unfaithful who chose to take the safe path, who misused the time, resources and opportunities accorded to him and demonstrated unfaithfulness, he will thrown “out into the dark, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.” For those who have faithfully served the Master, who chose to take the risk to follow Him even on the path that led to Calvary, who have used his gifts and graces for His glory, this passage reveals a promise, “come and join in your Master’s happiness.”