Message of Abbot Paul - Sunday 19th November 2023

We are coming to the end of the Liturgical Year and in two weeks’ time the Advent Season begins. In fact, were we living in Milan and keeping the Ambrosian rather than the Roman Calendar, today would be the Second Sunday in Advent. In fact, Advent is my favourite season, so I wish I lived in or near Milan! Nevertheless, today’s Gospel passage is the giveaway that we’re already being immersed in the essential Advent theme of Christ’s Second Coming and the Last Judgement. Today’s Gospel from Matthew (Mt 25: 14-30) is the Parable of the Talents, part of Jesus’ apocalyptic teaching. You know the story well.

 

​“Jesus spoke this parable to his disciples: ‘The kingdom of Heaven is like a man on his way abroad who summoned his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to a third one; each in proportion to his ability. Then he set out.’” A talent was a large amount of money, so the story appears to be one about the use of money and investing it wisely, but the parable isn’t about finance, it’s about the kingdom of heaven. Even so, the story continues, “The man who had received the five talents promptly went and traded with them and made five more. The man who had received two made two more in the same way. But the man who had received one went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.” When the master of those servants returns from his journey and asks them to render an account of their management of his money, there are kind words for the first two and condemnation for the third. To the first two, who had doubled their master’s fortune, he said, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have shown you can be faithful in small things, I will trust you with greater; come and join in your master’s happiness.” The third servant, poor man, was so frightened of his master that he hid his talent in the ground. When his master returns, he just hands it back. He’s described by his master as “wicked and lazy,” and not only is the talent taken from him and given to one of the others, but even worse happens: he is excluded from his master’s joy, he is thrown out “into the dark, where there will be weeping and the grinding of teeth.”

 

​Oh dear, it’s a grim tale and a sad one but, to tell the truth, it’s a timely warning to us all. God has given us many gifts: we even use the word talent now to describe them. We’ve been given them on trust, to use them for our own good and for the good of others, the common good. We are to nurture and develop our talents, multiplying them so that they fill the world with goodness and rejoicing. But God’s gifts are also spiritual: we have received the grace of Holy Spirit in Baptism and Confirmation and, indeed, in all the Sacraments, so as to build up the Body of Christ, his Church, and every part of it, beginning with the family. It doesn’t really matter how many or which talents we’ve been given; the important thing is to use them well and increase them. When reading and meditating on this section of the Gospel, we need to remember that God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save it, so that we should have life in his Name. Jesus hasn’t come to instil into us the fear of hell but the love of God and the desire for heaven. Let’s go for it!