HOMILY FOR THIRTY-THIRD SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME (A)

Fr Billy Swan

Dear friends. Del Boy Trotter – the famous character from the popular sitcom ‘Only Fools and Horses’, used to have a saying: ‘He who dares wins’. It came to my mind as pondered this Sunday’s Gospel where Jesus uses an example from the commercial world of trading, to make an important point. Del Boy’s famous saying captures something of this message but obviously not all of it. At a time in world history when there are many reasons to fear, the Gospel tells us to be brave and to take the risk to live and to live well. The parable Jesus tells is a warning not to live in small spaces where fear and a desire for comfort cause us to hunker down and to guard what we have, out of fear of losing it. Such a spirit is a recipe for a stymied life that will end of frustration, regret and sadness.

Unlike Del Boy’s ‘He who dares wins’, the Gospel is not advocating financial investment, gambling or reckless risk taking. The life that Jesus invites us to embrace is much deeper than all that. It is a call to give everything in loving charity, to deploy our talents selflessly and lovingly for service and to give our all to everything we do.

Listen to the electric words that Pope Leo spoke to hundreds of thousands of young people last Thursday in Peru:

“Be passionate about everything that is worthwhile, about what is true, good and beautiful! Develop your talents, discover the richness of your culture and dare to undertake magnanimous projects. Do not settle for living according to what others expect of you. God has created you for the purpose of accomplishing something that no one else can do in quite the same way”.

For Pope Leo, it is faith that opens up this vision of hope before the youth and before all of us. Faith is what sustains us and gives us the courage to keep going. Faith tells us that failure and mistakes are not the worst that can happen to us. What is worse is never to have taken a risk and never to have tried. Herein lies the power and potential of our religion friends!! It is the Gospel paradox of giving ourselves away in love in order to find ourselves, of dying to ourselves to rise again to a new life in Christ.

I would like to mention a group in my homily this weekend who took the risk to sign up to the Diploma in Pastoral Ministry course over two years ago and who graduated last Saturday in Maynooth. With others, I was involved with the group of 30 at the beginning of this journey. I remember some of them being nervous: ‘What have I gotten myself into?’; ‘This is going to be too difficult’; ‘How is all this going to go?’

Last Saturday, there was a real joy that their fears were overcome with the awarding of a Diploma that was worth the risk they took. To them we say: ‘Well done good and faithful servants!’ They have tasted the beauty, truth and goodness of our faith in a wonderful and life-giving way. This is the spirit of this Sunday’s Gospel. God has given us many gifts. Take the risk to share them.

Finally, did you ever wonder why the man of the parable gave one person 5 talents, to another 2 and to the last 1? Have you ever wondered why some have more gifts than you and others perhaps have less? Is not this unjust?

St Catherine of Siena helps provide an answer. In her Dialogues, Catherine sensed God speaking to her with these words:

“I distribute the virtues quite diversely; I do not give all of them to each person, but some to one, some to others. ... I shall give principally charity to one; justice to another; humility to this one, a living faith to that one. ... And so I have given many gifts and graces, both spiritual and temporal, with such diversity that I have not given everything to one single person, so that you may be constrained to practice charity towards one another. ... I have willed that one should need another and that all should be my ministers in distributing the graces and gifts they have received from me” (Dialogue, 7).

What God has given to us is not just for us. It is to be shared with others who have not. We who lack what others have are meant to receive what they share. No one has all the gifts. God made us that way so that we might learn to share and in sharing, building friendship and in doing so, to grow in love.

Friends. It’s true. ‘He who dares wins’. But not as Del Boy thinks but as Jesus asks us. Dare to believe, dare to hope, dare to love, dare to give your all and dare to be yourself.