Word to the Wise
Wednesday, November 16, 2022 - Wednesday in the 33th Week in Ordinary Time
[Rev 4:1-11 and Luke 19:11-28]I tell you, to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. [Luke]
The evangelist Luke has joined two different parables together in one place - the victorious king and the "talents" (a traditional term for the amount in the parable). But the central figure is the third servant who fails to use what he was given so that the master could profit from it. The message to Luke's community is that they have not been given a faith to be hoarded in fear but rather a faith that motivates them to a missionary effort. The "big picture" of Luke's two-volume work - Gospel and Acts - is the story of Jesus' mission beginning in Galilee, spreading to Jerusalem and from Jerusalem to the world. Christianity was not to become merely a sect of Judaism.
Pope Francis, in his initial encyclical, "The Joy of the Gospel" (Evangelii gaudium), has challenged all the baptized to become "missionary disciples." Our faith is not something to be hoarded as a personal possession, either on the personal or even institutional level (a "self-referent" Church obsessed with maintaining institutional character). The third servant in the parable was afraid to take a risk and had nothing to show for the money entrusted to him. A faith based on fear instead of confidence leads nowhere. It is a stewardship conferred at baptism, not a membership card in a spiritual elite of some kind. What will we have to show the King when he returns? AMEN