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The talents last week have come home to roost in today’s Gospel. It is the final Sunday of the year which the Church names as the Solemnity of Christ the King. It is a relatively recent addition to the liturgical calendar when Pope Pius XI in 1925, as a response to increasing secularism, instituted the Solemnity. For Year A, we are using Matthew’s Gospel and we have come to the end of Christ’s public ministry as the chapters following today will focus on the Passion and the Resurrection. Thus it is fitting that we can zero in on one of the Final Four Things which is the Last Judgement.
In the 1st Reading, God is the presented as the Shepherd. He will lead His flock as we hear in the Responsorial Psalm. However, in the Gospel, the scene shifts to the Last Judgement where Christ will sit, sift and separate the sheep from the goats. While there is selection, the criterion for judging is based on the 1st Reading, that is, how well we have served like God the Shepherd has.
At first glance, reading the Gospel, we see the King’s rather heavy-handed judgement until we realise that He is doing nothing more than to use the criterion of service. Here the talents are at play. Christ the King judges on account of our use of His blessings. He identifies as the poor, the hungry, the naked. In short, He places Himself in the shoes of the disenfranchised. Thus, to serve these marginalised is to serve Him. Blessings which are resources on loan to us are meant for our service of Christ in the poor and the rejected.
The question is how can we serve better? What does it mean to serve?
This year we have decided to bless and commission the Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion on this Solemnity. They have been called to provide a valuable service in the Cathedral. We often associate service in terms of fulfilling one’s duties. But service is more than discharging one’s obligation. To be able to provide a service is good because it is allows the Cathedral to function. Thus, we will soon ask for new lectors and commentators to proclaim the readings, sing the psalms and make announcements. We also require sacristy helpers, the people who wash, starch and iron the sacred linen. We seek for artists to arrange the flowers to beautify our sacred space. We need hospitality ministers who can greet and welcome the faithful who attend Mass. We want a cleaner crew to help upkeep the cleanliness of the Cathedral on a regular basis.
All these are necessary for the smooth running of the Cathedral. We have all come to accept and expect such services to be rendered so that we can worship in comfort. When the microphone does not work or now the LCD are growing dimmer, we are immediately conscious of how crucial the cogs must come together for a fully functioning Cathedral.
The commissioning of these extraordinary ministers on the Solemnity of Christ the King is a good way to get a sense of what it means to be a servant. As mentioned earlier, we naturally associate servants with service. But the truth is that to minister is more than just providing a service.
In the Last Judgement, the separation of sheep from goats seems to suggest that serving the poor is the only criterion used. In reality, it is more profound. Here perhaps we can appreciate that Christ the King is actually inviting us to imitate Him. What do I mean? We all recognise that service can be clinical and cold. Do you remember the scandal where some doctors, fearing religious contamination through touching, used pens instead to examine their patients? Likewise, the Cathedral can run like a clockwork. But what happens if it runs without the heart?
Without the heart, duties will soon turn heavy and burdensome. An EMOHC or anyone who ministers can actually get by with simply serving dutifully. If everyone takes his or her duties seriously, the Cathedral moves along just nicely. And yet, the question to ask is this. Do we resemble Christ? Is our heart like Christ’s heart?
We have placed a devotion at the centre of our liturgical life outside the Eucharist. Another term for the Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament is the “Eucharist prolonged”. Each Thursday we allocate two hours for parishioners to come and spend time with the Lord. Now we have added in Confession during the duration of our adoration so that the connexion between recognition with contrition for our sins and the Eucharist can be maintained. But more than this awareness of sin and grace, we are providing space and time so that the extraordinary ministers might come before the Lord. It is logical for an EMOHC to be present at the Eucharistic Adoration because their duty at the altar requires that they recognise the logical link between who they are and what they do. More so, Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament is the time and space for growing more and more into the Heart of Christ.
The ability to perform one’s duties is vital to a functioning Cathedral community. But loving Christ and beating with His Heart is so much more critical. Perhaps when we focus on Christ the King in His capacity as Judge, we may just miss the point that in order to be able to serve the poor and disenfranchised, it is not about more service that we have to provide. Rather, to be able to see Christ in the poor, our heart needs to beat more and more in rhythm with the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ the King.
We continue with the idea of action and accountability in the face of the Last Four Things. Today, the parable shifts not towards the end of the world but rather fixes its focus on where we are. This is clearly brought up in St Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians.
The Christian community was emblematic of an inability to hold the tension of being here in this world and yet being ready for the next. They were waiting rather anxiously for the 2nd Coming and yet complacency managed to set in. The thinking was that the “here and now” was not important since Christ would be coming already. They were wrong and St Paul exhorted them to labour while at the same time be ready for the Lord’s coming.
In the Gospel, the three players represent the spectrum which marks humanity. Two of them are truly engaged and they are commended for their stewardship. However, one of them chooses the path of safety and self-interest over courage in the face of risk and self-sacrifice.
It is true that we are on a journey. It is a pilgrimage with an end but the terminus is not necessarily in sight. This means that the journey is filled with choices to be made. Here, the logic of the Parable sounds rather commercial. God invests and He collects the interest. But if we think of the talents not as investments but rather from the perspective of collaboration and gifts, then the scenario will look different. We are put into the world not as if it were a salt mine, to work and pay back. Rather, we enter the world in order to enrich it. The question is how we can cooperate with God in this enterprise.
The measure of a talent is important. Different interpreters will give different values for them. According to one commentator, if we were to calculate value, a talent is worth an incredible amount of money. So, the man who was entrusted with one mere talent was actually given that much to begin with. The immensity of that amount suggests that “talents” are beyond the personal exhibition of one’s abilities as per BGT or AGT. It is much more than “personal” expressions or ownership.
Instead the parable is focused on the stewardship of God’s graces and gifts and our accountability for what we have been blessed with. When we view stewardship in terms of ownership, narrow selfishness can creep in. We might view stewardship as developing one’s gifts for self-improvement or to enrich oneself. Development in itself is not a bad thing. But when we take “blessings” as “ours” or “mine”, in general, we become afraid of losing what we have and the result is “possessiveness”. By and large, the world regards the blessings of gifts and talents to be personal possessions.
But what if we were to consider that everything we own is on loan, would we be more willing to share and sacrifice? The oft-quoted saying, “we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children” expresses the truth of living on borrowed time and space. If we were not caught up with being entitled, then the idea of stewardship can flow into an attitude of taking care of things that do not belong to us.
Thus, the first two servants were freer in the “divestment” of the talents simply because they were caretakers of God’s gifts. In the end, they went out and got more. If we are able to accept that talents are not personal wealth but their goal is to benefit all, then we might not be “selfish” in guarding our possessions. Instead, while waiting for the 2nd Coming, we begin to see where our talents can be best utilised for the furthering of God’s Kingdom.
In this enterprise, noteworthy for consideration is the widening chasm between the poor and the rich. The pandemic has enlarged the pool of poorer people. And a minority has benefitted from the industries surrounding the prevention of infection. For example, glove and mask manufacturers, not to mention the pharmaceuticals. A simplistic solution would be to force the rich should share their wealth with the poor. After all, the Church has adopted the option for the poor which places the onus on the rich to be generous in divesting their wealth. This remedy is a bit naïve and possibly superficial because what is not obvious in the stewardship of wealth is the necessity of prayer. It is readily forgotten that wealth is also a spiritual reality. The more we have, the more prayers we need because the wealthier we are, the more tempted we are to vain-glory and pride. If a person has more money, he or she will be tempted to acquire a newer model of cars or a fancier dress. The list for consumption is endless because people with extra disposable income are urged through advertisements to indulge in luxury. Again luxury is not wrong in itself. We should not criminalise prosperity because it is meant to be enjoyed.
However, as Christ Himself pointed out, possession is more than a material reality. When the Rich Young Man came to Jesus to ask what more he could do to gain eternal life, he had to turn away because he was rich and was unable to part with his wealth as suggested by Jesus. The solution to bridging the gap between rich and poor has to be a spiritual undertaking because wealth is more than a material issue. It is a deeply spiritual challenge. We pray that in the spiritual struggle of those who are rich that they may be helped by the Lord against the sin of selfishness and be blessed with spiritual strength to use their good fortune for furthering God’s Kingdom. It is not easy to part with even what is not ours or what is on loan to us. All the more we need to pray not just for the poor but also those who have been endowed with more that they may come to recognise and accept the responsibility of true and humble stewardship.
It is a blessing to be given much by the Lord but it is a greater blessing when we freely render to Him what was His in the first place. The Parable of the Talents remind us that right stewardship of God’s blessing, used in accordance with His will, will have a significant impact on the world, especially for those whom God has placed in our care and this will become clearer when we read next week’s Gospel. Stay tuned.
That we get judged as biblical illiterates is not an issue. The challenge is that we have come to believe it ourselves that we are indeed scripturally incompetent. “Catholics don’t know the bible” is often bandied about even by Catholics themselves.
The idea that Catholics are unbiblical might just stem from a schizophrenic understanding of Catholicism. The central worship of Catholicism, the Mass or the Eucharistic Sacrifice is profoundly biblical. For example, today’s parable of the Wise versus Foolish Virgins echoes loudly each time we celebrate the Sacrament of Baptism. When the lit baptismal candle is passed on to the godparents of the infant, there is an exhortation that they help the child to keep the flame alive until the time that Christ comes.
In other words, the newly baptised child is exhorted to be like the Wise Virgins who were ready to welcome the Lord. As we approach the end of the liturgical year, naturally, the themes inherent in the Last Things, namely death, judgement, heaven and hell are highlighted. We are asked to be prepared because we do not know when the Lord will come.
This preparation ties in with the 2nd Reading. The Thessalonians were not sure about Christ’s Parousia. The Lord did promised that He would return during their lifetime but members of the community were dying already. The point made by St Paul was that no advantage would be granted to those who were still alive at the 2nd Coming. What mattered most was to live as if each day would be our last and at the point death, to give an account for the state of our soul before God.
In the context of the Last Things, the question is: Are we ready to meet our Maker?
The 1st Reading points out an important difference in being ready. It is to be wise. We are heavily information-based society. Knowledge is power but knowledge is not the same as wisdom. One can know so much and yet be totally clueless. Many of our prayers at this time of the year ask for the grace to appreciate between things that are passing and things that endure. Wisdom is to discern the difference so that we are not caught unawares at the moment when we have to meet God.
The truth is many of us are not ready to meet Him. When it comes to God, we always feel that there is still time to prepare. Or given that life runs a typical trajectory of birth, life, old age and death, we presume that there will be time in the future to handle the will, for example. What is more urgent is “now” rather than “here-after”. In a way, procrastination is a perfect expression of unreadiness. Still, we are plugged in electronically and connected, just in case, something significant turns up. We are somewhat ready and in the meantime, we aimlessly scroll through YouTube hoping for something worthwhile to hold our attention.
How many of us do this first thing in the morning, that is, reach out immediately for our mobile devices to check for messages? This instinct has become second nature to us. Maybe it expresses the innate need to connect or ingrained craving for relationship. If that were the case, if that were true, then would it not be more natural for us to tune into God first, who is our source of being and connexion. We can safely say that we are in a period of the post-pandemic and a striking symbols of man’s unease when it comes to meeting God is the face mask. On the surface, the mask signals our readiness to engage the hostile world of diseases. With it, we can face the Covid with better confidence. At the same time, it can also be a token of our unreadiness to meet the Lord. For on the one hand, the mask protects but on the other hand, it is also a symbol that veils our fear of facing death.
The Wise Virgins remind us of a kind of constancy that is different from being plugged in and be connected that goes beyond noise and superficiality. Their waiting can come across as exhausting and life-wasting. But that is exactly the whole point of the Last Things. It is to be sober, ready and vigilant because we never know when the Lord Himself will show up. In a way, creation has been waiting for Him to come again whether we know it or not, whether we want it or not.
A crucial point about the state of readiness is that current sentiments might suggest that the so-called Wise Virgins were “selfish” for they refused to share their oil. It is not selfishness as the inability to be prepared for another person. Each individual must personally render an account of himself or herself before the Lord. It is impossible to ride on the coat-tail of another person when it comes to meeting the Creator.
The current “Gospel of Nice” preaches a message of universal salvation and would have us believe that we will inevitably be saved. The frightening reality is that even though God intends to save all, the truth is not everyone will be saved. There are people who do not think beyond this life. If we are to be like the Wise Virgins, it is to know where our assistance will aid a person but also to be firm in denying help because our good intention may create more harm than good.
In the meantime, every breath we take is one breath used up, one breath closer to death, and one step closer to giving an account of our time here on earth. In the Gospel, death clearly marked all the Virgins. Everyone grew drowsy and they fell asleep, symbolic of the fact that they all died. But death is also temporary. When Christ, the bridegroom arrived, they all woke up and the Wise Virgins, well-prepared, were able to welcome the Lord.
The sad picture is that we may not be the most prepared people and when we are not ready to welcome the Lord, we tend to escape through shopping, recreational drugs, casual sex, excessive eating or mindless entertainment. How much can we eat? How much can we shop? How much can we be entertained. All these are temporary fixes and escapades. After the highs are gone, we still need to face ourselves and God. As Christ the King approaches, may we grow in the grace of readiness for it is better to face Him prepared rather than not.
In the first reading, Prophet Malachi castigated the priests for having led the people astray. In the Gospel, Christ Himself warned the people not to follow the hypocritical behaviour of the Pharisees. These readings make priests uncomfortable. Given the many scandals exposed and brought to light, any priest standing in front of the congregation should feel ashamed. Scandals are indictments of our present pastoral leadership.
While it is certainly uncomfortable, this should give us pause to reflect. The clue comes at the end of the 1st Reading. God is the Father of us all. He gives us our identity. Priests are father-figures who lead others to God the Father. The measure for leadership is to lead others to the Father.
The mark of a good priest is one who narrows the gap between his belief and his behaviour. The deficit in credibility gap remains an issue in an “ever-present” reality meaning that everyone is always “online” and supposed to be “accountable”. Kick a dog publicly and see what it means to be “online” and “accountable”. What more, our broadcast media continually highlight the failures of many leaders. Daily we are exposed to this or that scandal. Rightly so, priests are judged for their failure to live according to what they preach.
The word “hypocrite” is interesting. We have no problem that others are called hypocrites. Just not us. This is where it becomes challenging. In the scrutiny of our clergy’s lack of credibility, our fragmented consciousness seems to have missed a bigger picture. A priest may have had a lot training to become highly qualified. One should expect that after all the formation, he should be able to function professionally. But a person is not a machine. Development and progress do not follow a mechanical logic. Why? Sometimes we forget where a priest comes from. What is his background?
The fallibility of priests can be reflexions their broken past. So many of us come from dysfunctional families and we carry traumas into our vocational and professional lives. This is not an excuse for failure. It is an acknowledgement. The unholiness of priests is also a mirror of the irreligiousness of our society. We do not pluck a holy priest out of the blue. We harvest them from the poisoned wells of our dysfunctional and disordered families.
There is an organic connection between the family, that is, marriage and the priesthood. The heart or the direction of criticism may come from a place of truth or of seeking justice. But it should also come from responsibility. Everyone is responsible. It is easy to demonise but infinitely difficult to see ourselves and take responsibility. It does not make sense that leaders are expected to live a higher standard while others, namely the family, can have the luxury of remaining disordered. To give an example, some priests are authoritarian and clerical. It is straightforwardly simply to push clericalism off as a systemic problem instead of admitting that a clerical priest often mimic his experience of an authoritarian father.
We want great priests in the Church. We want leaders who have incorruptible qualities. The present-day crises of paedophilia, together with sex trafficking and human exploitation, are telling us that there are disorders detrimental to the health and viability of our civilisation and human existence. The quality of family life is deteriorating. Leadership cannot not exist in a vacuum but it can come up higher if we have quality families. Each time when we look at the pathetic quality of our priesthood, we must take an honest look at how flawed our families have become. The family remains bedrock of any stable society. Perhaps we ought to start by strengthening the foundation of our family life and then better priestly vocations can come from there.
If a priest who had a questionable background turns out to be a good priest, then he does so by the grace of God. But many priests struggle simply because they need to rise above and overcome many negative facets of their history. It is not easy. Imagine juggling a vocation with all its professional challenges while battling the demons you have from your childhood. The more we reform our family life, the easier it might be for the Church to gain new and better vocations to the priestly life.
If the greatest amongst us is to be the servant of all, then the readings exhort us towards the height of humility and holiness. The priesthood is always meant to be a service in that direction. Since it is a powerful institution, it is also prone to abuse. But as long as priests recognise that their role is to serve, the Church is protected. St Augustine gives us an example. “For you, I am a Bishop. With you I am a Christian”. In being a Bishop, he recognises that he is different. He has a role to play and a responsibility to carry out. In being a Christian, he accepts his duty to live just like everybody else. That is how a priest should be.
Today, it is tempting to shine a spotlight on the glaring or apparent failure of our clergy. It is not easy to detect the shadows cast by our dysfunctional and decaying society on the priesthood. In a way, the 1st Reading and the Gospel cut both ways. They criticise, and rightly so, the failure of priesthood in the community. In the case of the Church, the crisis of the clergy is to have forgotten what their mission is. Their role is to point to the eternal, to the place where God can be Father of all. We have failed. Our failures challenge our Catholic and Christian community also to honestly take a look at our family relationships and how traumas in the family will have a deleterious effect on the quality of our vocation. It is easier to blame the priest for his sins and failures. It is much harder to recognise the family’s poverty in this equation. While the Church is committed to proper safeguarding protocols, the laity should also be encouraged to relook the role that family and society plays in providing the Church with holy and humble priestly vocations.
We may be the most connected age in history. Yet hyper-connectivity has created the loneliest generation the world has ever seen. It feels like everyone has a very busy social life if we observe how individuals eating at the same table do not converse with each other. Instead each one is engrossed with communicating outside the circle of physical presence.
This sad reality of how “un-present” we are to each other physically is a good starting point for reflecting on why we are here today.
Our actions have impact on others. Before, now and after. In short, we affect people, past, present or future. It is not a one-way street affair. Others affect us too. We may have benefited from the actions of someone whom we have never met in the past, now or even in the future. This ability to affects others is at the heart of the Communio Sanctorum. “The Communion of Saints expresses a reality that there exists a communion of goods in the Church. The most important member is Christ since He is the head. Therefore the riches of Christ are communicated to all the members through the Sacraments (CCC#947). The Church who is governed by the same Spirit means that all she has received necessarily becomes a common fund”.
The Communion of Saints is not restricted to the list of canonised saints because we ourselves can contribute to the spiritual goods being exchanged as well as become recipients of such goods. In other words, every action of ours is not restricted to ourselves only.
A good analogy for the communion of saints is a big cooking pot of soup. All the goodness in the soup comes from Christ and He gives it out to those who are most in need of the nourishment. What happens is that our individual goodness is not wasted. Remember your morning prayer. “O my Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer you my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day for all the intentions of Your Sacred Heart, in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world, in reparation for my sins, for the intentions of all my family, friends and relatives and in particular for the intentions of the Holy Father”. This Prayer powerfully expresses the “communion of saints”.
Whatever little good we do, Christ can take it and use it for the good of souls anywhere in the world. Our loving actions can reach out and benefit anyone across space and time. Of course, we are also beneficiaries of the meritorious acts of love performed by someone else across space and time!
If every meritorious deed we perform adds to the goodness of the soup in the pot of Christ, then a way to understand sin is that whenever we sin, Christ will need to work harder to save us. No good deed is ever wasted, just that our evil deeds make Christ’s work of salvation a lot heavier. Those of you who pray hard for the conversion of a hardened soul know that you can be praying for decades.
In the light of this wonderful idea of what we can do for others, perhaps we should take time to consider three things.
Firstly, to give thanks to God for the spiritual goods that have already been conferred on us by virtue of other people’s loving actions. Strangers help us without our awareness of it. This kind of spiritual communion makes the world less frightening.
Secondly, to pray that the soup of Christ’s merits and the spiritual goodness of the communion of saints be conferred on those who need our prayers. St Theresa of the Child Jesus said, “I will spend my heaven doing good on earth”. The saints especially Our Holy Mother Mary is a reservoir that is gushing forth goodness for all who want to drink. Pray that sinners may drink deeply, from the “flowing fountain” of the Communio Sanctorum.
Thirdly, strive to be a producer of spiritual fruits for others, engaging in acts of love, and offering up any suffering that comes your way on behalf of those most in need of that fruit. Our suffering is never wasted. United with Christ, He uses it for saving others.
Finally, people feel compelled to leave legacies of themselves. They build mausolea and monuments. But in time, these material memorials crumble. So, what better legacy than to be meritorious in our actions so that others can benefit from it. Even though we may be dead but in a way, we live forever by our goodness.
Our “acts of love” send ripples as they join the cosmic waves of Christ’s goodness that radiates outward to touch and save the lives of others. The caveat is this and it is related to All Souls Day. We are able to do good for others and benefit ourselves when we are alive. The moment death closes its door on our earthly life, the only avenue available is to do good for others but never to benefit ourselves. The souls in purgatory pray for us. But they will have to depend on us to pray for them in their journey towards the beatific vision. So be good and do good before we die.
