15 November 2020. XXXIII SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME. Mt 25, 14-30
The Gospel continues this Sunday with its call for vigilance so that we do not fall asleep in our Christian experience. When St. Matthew wrote his gospel many members of his community thought that the last coming of the Lord was something imminent, and so some of them devoted themselves to “waiting” without doing anything.
The parables in chapter 25 of St. Matthew all go in the same direction: warn them not to fall asleep, but to be vigilant. Today he tells us the parable of the talents, the parable of the master who leaves his servants some money (talents) until he returns. On his return he calls each of them to account. Two have been “faithful” and receive their master’s praise and their reward: “enter into your master’s banquet”. The third has hidden his talent and only returns it. He has done nothing wrong, but receives the reproach and punishment of his master for having done nothing.
The talent was worth approximately 36 kilos of gold, equivalent to the salary of a day labourer for 16 or 18 years of work. A lot of money.
In the interpretation of the parable, when we speak of “talents”, we can quickly think of “intelligence” or “qualities”, which God has given us, and how we negotiate those gifts. This is what living in a time and society as materialistic as ours leads to. I prefer to think that the talent that God gives to each of us, more than a quality, is our own life, which God gives to all of us equally. And it is with this life that we have to negotiate. We can’t let it pass by and do nothing, waiting for “the holy advent”. Our life is too precious to let it slip through our fingers. The best investment is the one we can make for others, following the advice of Jesus: “whoever wants to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses it for me and for the gospel will gain it for eternal life.
We are celebrating the IV World Day of the Poor in a context marked by the pandemic of COVID-19, which is ravaging our world. A Day which, with the slogan “Reach out to the poor”, is a call to take charge of those who are weakest and hardest hit by this crisis.
The Word of God invites us to an active attitude in living our faith. Jesus challenges us to develop the talents that the Father has given us to grow as people and to improve our world.
Juan Ramon Gomez Pascual, cmf
