What Have You Done with What God Gave You?
MASS Státuit ei Dóminus
LESSON Sir 44:16-27; 45:3-20
GOSPEL St Matthew 25:14-23
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
The servant condemned in today’s Gospel did not steal his master’s money. He did not squander it in riotous living or consume it upon his pleasures. When the master returned, the talent was still there, intact and carefully preserved. Yet the servant was condemned because the treasure entrusted to him had borne no fruit. He had buried it.
We shall answer before God not only for the evil we have committed, but also for the good we could have done and left undone. It will not suffice to say: “I lived quietly and harmed nobody.” The Master will ask what His gifts produced through us. Grace is entrusted to us not to lie inert, but to bear fruit unto eternity.
Few saints understood this more completely than St Thomas of Villanova. Born in Spain towards the close of the fifteenth century, he taught philosophy, logic and theology. Instead of converting learning into worldly distinction, he entered the Order of Hermits of St Augustine in 1516. His intelligence became an oblation, returned to God through prayer, preaching and the direction of souls.
He served his Order as prior and provincial and became renowned as a preacher. Yet Thomas did not seek preferment. He refused the Archbishopric of Granada and accepted the See of Valencia only under obedience. He received the episcopate not as a reward bestowed upon his abilities, but as a debt which those abilities obliged him to discharge.
The Epistle declares: Ecce sacerdos magnus, qui in diebus suis placuit Deo—“Behold a great priest, who in his days pleased God.” The Church does not say that he pleased the court, mastered the arts of reputation, or secured the applause of his age. He pleased God. In that brief sentence lies the only greatness which survives the grave.
The Epistle continues: “In the time of wrath he was made a reconciliation.” The true priest stands at the altar between the holiness of God and the sins of men, not as the author of reconciliation, but as the appointed minister of Christ’s one sacrifice. His hands are anointed to offer, his voice consecrated to teach, and his authority entrusted to him that souls may be restored to peace with God.
St Thomas understood that his episcopate belonged first to the altar. He reformed his clergy, visited his parishes, convened a diocesan synod, educated poor students, and cared for prisoners, the sick and the abandoned. These were not the projects of a merely social bishop. They flowed from the Sacrifice he offered. At the altar he handled the charity of Christ made sacramentally present: the Body given, the Blood poured out, the Victim reserving nothing for Himself. Thomas could not offer that Victim in the morning and devote the afternoon to preserving his own comfort.
He continued to live as an Augustinian friar. His habit was old, his household austere, and money placed in his hands passed readily to the needy. He became known as the Father of the Poor because the poor did not merely hear of his compassion. They encountered it.
Today’s Collect discloses the supernatural principle: “O God, Who didst adorn blessed Bishop Thomas with the virtue of singular mercy towards the poor, grant, through his intercession, that Thou mayest pour forth the riches of Thy mercy upon all who call upon Thee.” Thomas first received mercy and then became its instrument. When he gave to the poor, he was not a superior stooping towards an inferior. He was a debtor distributing something of the abundance which divine mercy had placed in his hands.
The poor person is therefore not an interruption to the spiritual life. He is one of the places in which Christ waits to be recognised and loved. St Thomas sought the lasting good of those he assisted through education, work and stability; yet he never allowed “prudence” to become a respectable name for selfishness. What we do or refuse to do for those in need is done or refused to Christ.
Nor does this feast concern only the wealthy. In the Gospel one servant receives five talents, another two and another one. Their portions are unequal, but nobody receives nothing. God does not demand from us what He has entrusted to another. He asks what we have done with what He placed in our own hands.
You may possess little money, but you have time. You can visit someone forgotten, forgive an injury which you have enjoyed remembering, or pray for a soul unaware of his need. These gifts become sterile only when we bury them.
Some bury their talents beneath fear, resentment or false humility. Many bury them beneath perpetual occupation: always busy, yet unavailable whenever charity becomes inconvenient. The Gospel’s servant had persuaded himself that doing nothing was reasonable. His explanation did not change his barrenness.
The ancient rite does not permit us to pass over another witness today. Within the Mass of St Thomas the Church commemorates St Maurice and his companions, the martyrs of the Theban Legion. According to venerable tradition, these Christian soldiers served the Empire faithfully; but when obedience to the emperor demanded infidelity to God, they refused. At Agaunum they accepted death rather than purchase life by betraying Christ.
Their commemoration carries the parable to its utmost consequence. Life itself is entrusted, not owned. Maurice and his companions distinguished lawful authority from an unlawful command, loyalty from servility, and obedience from apostasy. No Christian may commit evil because a superior commands it, a government requires it or society rewards it. When earthly authority contradicts God, fidelity may become costly—but the cost does not annul the duty.
St Thomas spent his life in mercy; St Maurice surrendered his life in witness. The confessor and the martyrs proclaim the same truth: nothing received from God may finally be withheld from God. Both expose the comfortable religion which offers Christ only what remains after safety and convenience have been secured.
Charity must acquire a cost. Christ did not redeem us by benevolent sentiment. His hands were emptied, pierced and extended upon the Cross; at every Mass that sacrifice is made present. We cannot receive the fruit of such self-emptying while arranging our own lives so that love shall never inconvenience us.
There is a poverty more terrible than material want. A man may possess food and shelter while starving for truth and grace. St Thomas fed bodies, but he also preached repentance. Mercy severed from truth degenerates into indulgence, while truth spoken without mercy may become a weapon. In Christ they are indivisible. He forgives the sinner and commands him to sin no more.
We should therefore ask not merely, “What wrong have I done?” but, “What has God entrusted to me? Who ought to have benefited from it? Which talent am I burying?” Parents must examine their stewardship of their children’s souls. Priests must ask whether their ministry is spent for souls or guarded for comfort. Those with money must ask whether they give only what they will never miss. All must ask where fear of disapproval has made them silent when fidelity required speech.
Make the examination particular. Whom should you telephone? Whom should you visit? What alms should you give? What duty have you postponed? What apology should you make? What truth are you afraid to confess? General resolutions seldom reform a life. A buried talent must be unearthed at some definite place.
None of us can ask these questions without discovering failure. That is why the Collect directs us towards the inexhaustible riches of divine mercy. Even our desire to serve is God’s gift. But the mercy which pardons past sterility also commands us to rise and labour while daylight remains.
The Master does not praise the servants for brilliance. He calls them “good and faithful.” The hidden prayer, the unnoticed sacrifice, the alms known to God alone, the duty performed when no gratitude follows—these are entered in the account books of eternity.
St Thomas died at Valencia in 1555, still giving away what remained to him. Having spent his learning, authority, possessions and strength in Christ’s service, he came before the Master with empty hands—but they were empty because he had returned everything. St Maurice and his companions came stripped even of earthly life, yet bearing before the throne of God an unbroken faith.
Let us ask their intercession for a heart formed by the altar: tender before need, courageous before falsehood, obedient to rightful authority, immovable when commanded to sin, and ready to be spent for Christ. Then may the Lord find that His grace was not buried, His poor were not disregarded, and His truth was not bartered for safety. May we hear at last: “Well done, good and faithful servant: because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many. Enter thou into the joy of thy lord.”
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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