Word to the Wise
Wednesday, November 19, 2025 - Wednesday in the 33th Week in Ordinary Time
[2 Macc 7:1, 20-31 and Luke 19:11-28]While people were listening to Jesus speak, he proceeded to tell a parable because he was near Jerusalem and they thought that the Kingdom of God would appear there immediately. So he said, "A nobleman went off to a distant country to obtain the kingship for himself and then to return. He called ten of his servants and gave them ten gold coins and told them, 'Engage in trade with these until I return.'.......
The parable of the coins has a parallel in the Gospel According to Matthew where the money is called "talents." The Gospel According to Luke has woven into the story an additional reference to King Herod who had gone to Rome to get himself appointed to a position of power in Roman-occupied Palestine. In both gospels, the parable speaks to the question of the "Kingdom of God" and Jesus' return.
The first thing to note is that there was still a misunderstanding in the "crowd" about the nature of the Kingdom of God. This misunderstanding was shared even by the apostles. Jesus' adversaries would level a political charge against him before Pilate on this subject. But Jesus was not preaching political revolution. His "kingdom" is the one we bring about by our faithful living out of his teachings. And this brings us to the matter of his "return." There will, indeed, be a "day of reckoning."
This past Sunday, we were warned not to try and figure out when the end of time and Jesus' return would occur. Rather we are to live in anticipation of it. I suggested then that we have been given wonderful resources to enable us to live with that anticipation. God the creator has given us a planet with all that we need to give everyone a decent standard of living, but we tend to be selfish about it and exploit the resources for money so that the majority of the human population lives in poverty. We have been given God the Son to teach us how to love our neighbor and share the resources we have been given. But Lazarus is still on the doorstep. We have been given the Holy Spirit to guide us in making the decisions that have to be made but the desire for political power and wealth frequently shapes those decisions instead of the Holy Spirit.
There will be a day of reckoning the gospels assure us. That day occurs for each of us when we die, but it will eventually occur for all of time and creation. Each of us, however, has been given the resources to live faithfully. How we use them will be the agenda of the reckoning! AMEN
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