While we are still in this world, let us always be learning to repent…. While we are in this world, we must take every opportunity of repentance for our sins. Our salvation depends on it. Once we have left the world, it is no longer possible to confess one’s sins or be sorry for them.
My dear brothers and sisters in Our Lord Jesus Christ, reading these words from a second-century Christian some days ago, I was struck by their relevance to the month of November when we remember not just the Ecclesia Poenitens – the faithful departed who are in the state of purgation of their sins, but also the Ecclesia Triumphans, the saints, angels, and blessed souls who have completed their earthly journey, have triumphed over sin and now experience the beatific vision.
As underlined some weeks ago, the term “communion of the saints” that we utter in the Creed communicates to us the truth that the saints in heaven intercede for us on earth, and for those in purgatory. They join their prayers to ours so that we may be strengthened in our journey, and so that those in purgatory may be purged of their sins.
The saints do this, because while in this world, they made a habit of interceding for others. This is precisely the point out second-century Christian author makes, what we do on earth, sets the tone for what we will do in eternity.
This Sunday, Holy Mother Church once again draws our attention to the end times: the end of the world and the end of human life. While we are encouraged to pray for the faithful departed throughout this month, we are also asked to reflect on our own lives and on the Four Last Things: death, judgment, heaven and hell. Clearly, these last things are not unrelated to eternity;
Death is certain, as is the judgement of our entire life. And at that judgement, we should be wary – no, we should live in terror – of saying to the righteous judge:
I went off and buried your talent
in the ground.
Here it is back.
At baptism we were given life, and like the good and faithful servants, our job must be to multiply this talent that we are given. In the parable, the talents that our Lord was referring to was the currency of His times. It is helpful for us anglophones that the word now also refers to skills and capacities that we have – also given to us by God. However, this similarity should not blind us to the fact that we are given currency, and it is our job to multiply it.
If the currency we are given is the promise of life in heaven, and the way to get there, then like the saints it is our job to multiply this currency. Of those of us who do so, the psalm today sings:
Blessed are you who fear the LORD,
who walk in his ways!
For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork;
blessed shall you be, and favored.
It is possible that this fruit that we are entitled to will not be eaten while we are on this earth, but, the psalm assures us, we will “see the prosperity of [the heavenly] Jerusalem” once our pilgrimage on this earth is over, and once the Righteous Judge comes to take stock of His world.
Another way to understand the currency that Our Lord gives us is to see it as grace. No matter the trials and the crosses that Our Lord permits us to suffer – so that we might unite ourselves with Him, His Cross and His Passion – he also provides us the grace necessary for us to bear them. As He promised St. Paul:
My grace is sufficient for you (2 Cor 12: 19).
This reliance on His Grace is what made the saints. The saints suffered, but they suffered gracefully, and – following the teaching of our second-century Christian – because they learned to do so while on this earth, they now intercede so that others may similar suffer gracefully. The point of our intercessions for others is not necessarily to make their pains go away. This would be lovely, of course, but the point of intercession to ensure that if it is the will of God that we should suffer, we suffer gracefully, offering it as a sacrifice for the good of the Church.
What we do on earth, we will do in heaven, and in purgatory, which is why, while we are on this earth, we must do our all to ensure that we multiply the talent that we were given at baptism.
One last observation, in the Gospel, Our Lord tells us that the first servant:
Immediately the one who received five talents went and traded with them
One could focus on the immediacy with which the servant went off to multiply, but I would like to briefly dwell on the manner in which we multiplied his talent, he traded with them. This reminds me of the practice among pious Catholics, “pray for me, I will pray for you.” What is this, if not trading of the talent we have been given?
Let us, therefore, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, work to multiply the talent given to us, so that, at the end of our days, and at the end of time, when we are presented before Our Lord, He may say to us in all tenderness:
'Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Since you were faithful in small matters,
I will give you great responsibilities.
Come, share your master's joy.'
(A version of this homily was first preached to the Catholic residents at Aaji Care Home for Assisted Living, Old Goa. Pray for them!)
