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     Today's gospel scripture is the Lukan version of the same parable from the gospel of this past Sunday from Matthew.  However, Luke has tweaked it a bit to meet the needs of the different community for which he wrote this gospel.  Luke's community would be a missionary community.  The Gospel According to Luke has an overall narrative about Jesus traveling to Jerusalem where he would be rejected and put to death, but would rise and send the Holy Spirit to inspire the community to take his teaching to the whole world.  This would involve considerable risk, especially when that Holy Spirit opened the community to non-Jewish members.  The risk was a serious one because of opposition from both Jewish and non-Jewish sources.  The parable is about the community being held responsible for a lack of courage in spreading the gospel.  The gospel is not to be hoarded and buried or to be put in a museum of the past.  The unfortunate third servant was afraid and failed to share the gospel with others.

     There is an important lesson in all of this for our Catholic faith. It is not meant to be hoarded and buried as a personal treasure.  It is meant to be shared and spread around.  It is not a museum artifact.  Pope Francis has directly challenged the fear that some in our church have about the faith as something to be buried inside us and defended like a fortress.  We have entrusted with Jesus' message to share it with the world.  We have been promised the help of the Holy Spirit in doing this.  Pope St. John Paul II in one of his encyclicals, quoted Jesus' words to Peter, "Put out into the deep!" (Duc in altum)  This remains our challenge.  We have the example of the first two servants in the parable, but we also now have the personal example of Pope Francis.  When fear paralyzes us, from Cardinal to pew person, we will have a blunt reckoning from the one who has entrusted us with the message.  When courage and joy motivate us, we will share the Master's joy.  AMEN