Thirty-third Sunday   November 13, 2011

Proverbs 31:10-31 Psalm:  128 1 Thess. 5:1-6  Matthew 25:14-30

Today is the last Sunday in Ordinary time, in a way. Next Sunday, we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King, and then we enter into the Season of Advent. During these last Sundays of the Year, we concentrate on the

• the Last things in life
• an accountability for our actions
• the Last Judgment and the consequences: Heaven or Hell.

Consequently, the readings talk about Human Behaviour, either putting up a model for us to imitate, or a paradigm that we must avoid. It is usually told in extreme language.

In our first reading from the Book of Proverbs,  we have a glowing report of an ideal wife. So many thousands of years ago, the time and place has a culture, where women are not involved in political or business careers as we have in our day and age. So we must make some mental adjustments. We cannot judge things according to our standards of equality today. Proverbs tells us that the idea wife is one

• who is diligent in house work
• kind to her servants
• provides for her children
• brings honour to her husband
• has foresight and is enterprising.

As we look at this picture. It is clinically perfect. It is too good to be true. It is almost like a perfect porcelain doll. You want to admire it from afar. You do not touch it. You may drop it and it will shatter.

The picture of the diligent wife is a picture of my mother, and most of the women here, either married or not. But few will admit to this picture of themselves. We tend to notice our flaws rather than our qualities of our human nature.

• Twenty years ago, a woman in her 70s was preparing for the readings of her funeral. When I suggested this passage, her reply was, “You better not. My husband might want to come up to the coffin and see if it is really me or someone else lying there.” We tend to have a low image of ourselves.

2.  St. Paul gives us a clue to this path to sanctity in the second reading in the letter to the Thessalonians. Paul tells us

- don’t worry be happy

- do not be concerned

- do not worry if the Lord comes right now.

The reason:

• You have not been walking in the darkness, and doing deeds of darkness.
• In spite of the trials and temptations, you walk as Children of the Light.
• There is hope, and much to look forward to the coming of the Day of the Lord.

 When we speak of the Day of the Lord, it is the Day that the Lord comes to judge the Living and the Dead.

The Gospel is a fairly clear-cut account of how we will be judged. We have been given as a part of our human heritage a certain amount of gifts or talents. But as Christians, we have to go a step further, because now we have God’s Amazing Grace. This Grace can and wants to do wonders within us, if we only allow the Spirit of God full freedom to work within us.

When we pray and meditate on the Parable of the Talents, our minds are coloured by the pattern and behaviour of the world in which we live. The standard of our world is that you must be successful to say you have used your talents properly.  At first sight, the Parable says that

• the one with five talents, makes five more. He was rewarded with five cities
• the one with two talents, makes two more. He was rewarded with two cities
• the one with one talent, made nothing. He is punished.

So let me tell you about the fourth slave, whom our modern world would like to forget, whom our modern world will ignore.  He too was given one talent. When the Master came to make a reckoning, he came and said. “Master, you gave me one talent. I tried to use it. I made a mess. I was not a good business man. I lost the talent.” And the Master, said, Well done good and faithful servant. Come into the Kingdom prepared for you. And the people said, “Wait a minute, there is some mistake here. The third slave did not loose the talent, at least he brought back what the Master gave! But the fourth slave lost all”

The Master says, “My ways are not your ways.”  God can always achieve success. God did not ask you to succeed. God asks you to use your talent. Sometimes when we fail, when we blunder, God’s will is still done. Peter and Judas – both failed. One denied, the other betrayed. One came back with faith in God’s loving kindness. The other believed he was beyond redemption. 

• (My personal opinion is that is the sin against the Holy Spirit. It is the time we think that even God cannot do anything with me. God will never act against your will, your choice.)

There are people in this world who are by nature, - kind, generous, caring, thoughtful, cheerful. And there are others who all their life struggle. They struggle to keep in control: their temper, their jealousy, their desire for revenge, their sexual desires, their alcoholic tendencies.  Too often we write them off as “lost cases” – we do not want to give them another chance. But God does! In the long run, that is all that matters, isn’t it.