Today’s Gospel [Matthew 25:14-30] reports one of the last parables of Jesus’ public life. It is a very familiar one – so familiar that our word “talent” takes its standard English meaning from its use in this parable. In the ancient world, of course, a “talent” was a unit of money. It was, in fact, the largest monetary unit, which means the master would have been, in effect, something like a millionaire.
In the liturgical context of these final weeks of the year, we apply this (and similar parables) to judge ourselves, as we examine our present lives in this interim between Christ’s first coming and his return to judge the living and the dead at the end of history, about which we will hear more directly next week. As in this parable, the judgment occurs at the end, but it is what happens now, in the meantime, that matters.
Famously, this particular parable portrays two good and faithful servants, who successfully invested their master’s money and returned a good profit, justifying their master’s investment in them. There is also a third, wicked, lazy servant, who appears paralyzed by fear, preoccupied with caution above all else, who hid his master’s money in a hole in the ground.
Obviously, this parable is not about providing practical advice on how to invest one’s money (assuming one has money to invest, which for many in Jesus’ audience might not have been the case, any more than it may be for many people in our world today). This is not a parable about economics, but about the kingdom of God. And, in the kingdom of God, the two good and faithful servants are praised and rewarded, while the wicked, lazy servant is condemned – condemned for his failure to actually accomplish anything, but maybe even more for his fear of failure, and for the inexcusable inactivity and passivity his paralyzing fear and consequent caution produced.
The successful servants apparently knew what was expected of them. Like the fear of the Lord, which, as our psalm says, makes people blessed [Psalm 128:1], knowing that they were expected to accomplish something with what they had been given, far from immobilizing them, instead inspired them to do something bold with the resources entrusted to them.
Of course, since this is a parable primarily about the kingdom of God, obviously, the master’s expectations of his servants seem intended to suggest God’s expectations of us – the varied graces given each of us to contribute in our different ways to our common life as the Church and to caring for our common home in this world. The lesson of the parable is that whatever gifts we have been given, whatever talents we have, if not used, will be wasted, will atrophy - as language skills, for example, are lost for lack of use.
Saint Thomas of Villanova (1488-1555) famously applied this lesson to the wealthy, aristocratic, and educated elites in 16th-century Spain. He castigated the rich who hoarded their wealth to pass down to their heirs, equating them directly with the servant who buried his talent in the dirt, directing the instead fund public works in Valencia, where Thomas was bishop. He also argued that intelligence and education were “talents” to be employed in teaching and catechizing the poor and providing legal assistance to the exploited.
The parable certainly suggests that God’s expectations which, when the time comes to settle accounts, may end up being most threatening precisely to anyone who is determined, like the third servant, to keep this life unthreatening.
To the first two, however, their master must have seemed incredibly generous. Surely, he turns out to be the most imaginative and adventurous person in the parable, the one who risks treating his servants as partners and rewards them with greater responsibility and greater closeness. So scared, however, is that wicked, lazy servant that he fails to see what the other two see so well. He cannot see what he is being encouraged to make of his life, what he is being personally empowered to become. As Pope Francis famously said, it is defeatism, which stifles boldness and zeal [Evangeli Gaudium, 85], whereas God’s love summons us to mission and makes us fulfilled and productive [Evangeli Gaudium, 81].
Notice that we have three possibilities here, and I for one have always been struck by the fact that the servant with the 2 talents, in terms of the resources he has to work with, actually starts out a lot closer to the wicked, lazy servant than he does to the superstar servant with the 5 talents. Like the servant with only 1 talent, the one with the 2 may seem to lack any obvious star quality or other signs of greatness. We all know that in real life all sorts of people, of whom not much is ordinarily expected, when suddenly pressed to take responsibility, when put in a position that challenges them to do something, often respond unexpectedly well, succeeding in ways above and beyond whatever was stereotypically expected of them.
So, in terms of what he does with what he has been given, in terms of his outlook on life, the servant with the 2 talents ends up much closer to the one with the 5 – and light years away from the wicked, lazy servant with only 1 talent, whose self-absorbed focus on his powerlessness, his paralyzing fear, his sense of himself as a victim - how contemporary that seems - have turned him into someone one of my professors once called a silent spectator in the story of his own life!
So, now, with which of the servants do we identify? Whom do we see when we imagine God? How do we interpret and experience his expectations of us? Do we feel threatened, as if God were just out to get us? Do we - like the wicked, lazy servant - imagine that the challenging situations in which we find ourselves in life are more like traps God sets for us to catch us in failure to fulfill his will? What fears block and impede us from making the most of our opportunities, however varied they may be, in life?
Or do we recognize, in those challenging situations in which we find ourselves in life, an unprecedented opportunity - to live a new and abundant life of moral responsibility, and an invitation to a life of ever-increasing intimacy with God?
For those starting out on life’s pilgrimage, this parable is an invitation to make the most of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. For those of us nearing the last stop, this parable is more like an examination of conscience, challenging us to look back over our lives, at how we have responded to those challenges and opportunities as we prepare our own answer when the Lord calls each of us to give an account of ourselves.
Like the three servants in the parable – and like the worthy wife, so extolled for her endeavors in today’s first reading [Proverbs 31:10-31] – each one of us experiences his or her own particular set of challenges and opportunities. And, just like with the servants in the parable, the gifts God has given us to work with can be multiplied many times over by being boldly invested in one another, in getting out of ourselves and joining with others in this world, which we have been entrusted to love and care for, and in our life together as his Church, whose mission it is to share our master’s joy with that same world.
Homily for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, November 22, 2026.
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