Homily 470 – Ordinary Time Week 33 – Year A
“Master, I knew you were a demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you did not scatter; so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground. Here it is back.”
The servant in the gospel quoted above says that it was “out of fear” that he hid his master’s money. Almost any time we hear of fear in the Bible, it’s a bad thing. The master gave the servant the talent because he knew what the servant was capable of. He trusted him. But fear kept the servant from doing what he was made to do.
What keeps you from doing what God created you to do? Is it fear? Many of us are afraid of failure, afraid of not measuring up to others, afraid of disappointing ourselves and others. So we bury our talent and try to stall out the time of our life with other things. This is what the servant did. In burying his master’s talent, he really wanted to go do his own thing and forget all about the master.
The return God is looking for is not money but effort. He want our heart, our love. If you give it everything you’ve got and lose everything in the process, good for you. As Mother Theresa reminds us, we’re called to be faithful, not successful. If you overcome fear to give God all your effort, to “dare greatly” as the contemporary author Brené Brown puts it, then it doesn’t matter if you’re “successful.”
At the end of our life we should hope to say, “God, I was so grateful for the gifts you gave me that I did the very best I could. I gave it everything I had in life. I tried to love you and share that love with others every day. But I lost everything. I have nothing left to give you but myself. Here I am.” And he will surely say to you, “Well done, my good and faithful servant….Come, share your master’s joy.”