Matthew 25: 14-30 Faithful

Bible Reading for the Thirty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time:

What is the connection between the Old Testament portrait of an ideal wife, St. Paul’s passionate exhortation to stay awake, and Jesus’ strange parable of the three servants? What connects the three readings is the key word “faithful.” To appreciate this, you have to dig beyond the external details and focus on the word “faithful.”

First, let us consider “faithful” in the Biblical sense. It is God above all who is faithful. No matter how unfaithful the chosen people had been, they could always count on the God’s word, count on His promises.

That divine fidelity finds its human perfection in Jesus. He fulfils His Father’s will even to the cross, and makes it possible for us to be faithful.

And how about “faithful” in the New Testament? The faithful are reliable, dependable, and trustworthy. They are faith – full, full of faith. They can be trusted completely because they have entrusted themselves completely to God and His Christ, to God’s people, to God’s creation.

Such is the ideal wife of the Book of Proverbs. She is faithful. Everyone can depend on her: husband, children, servant, and merchants, even the poor.

She fears the Lord not with fright, not with terror, but simply with reverential awe in the presence of the living God, a God who never goes back on His own promises.

In Matthew’s parable, Jesus was addressing the religious leaders of the Jews, especially the scribes. Much had been entrusted to them – in particular, the Word of God. Soon they would have to render a reckoning.

How had they used what had been committed to them? Had they been “faithful” like the first and second servants? Or had they been slothful, idle, lazy, like the third?

Had they used God’s Word in harmony with God’s will, traded on their trust, made it pay off? Or had they frustrated God’s Word by worrying about themselves, neglecting to use the trust, refusing to risk, enouncing responsibility for the money by burying it?

Similarly for Paul’s Thessalonians, they were waiting for the Lord to return – soon. Paul believes that whenever the Lord comes, it will be sudden. Therefore, “Keep awake and be sober.”

Awake – not only with eyes wide open so that they can see Christ coming on the cloud of glory, but wide awake in every way, watching for Christ in every circumstance. Such was fidelity then: for a Jewish wife, for an Old Testament religious leader, and for an early Christian.

To the question: What does it mean to be faithful now? Remember, it is a distinguished name you and I carry – we are Christian faithful. Faithful, like many too familiar words, rolls off our tongues without a second thought.

And yet, this word, more than any other single word, sums up who we are as Christians. We are men and women who are full of faith and who keep faith. It tells who we are, because it tells whom we love.

What do we mean? We are Christian faithful, first because we are committed to Christ. No commitment may take precedence over that. In baptism God put His seal upon us, the seal of the Spirit, somewhat as a Roman soldier was branded with the seal of the emperor, somewhat as cattle are branded with their owner’s trademark, so Christians are stamped with the seal of the Spirit.

We belong to Christ, and through him to the Father. Renounce it we can, with our lips or our lives, but the seal is permanently there. From here to eternity we belong to Christ.

The problem is – how do we put this relationship into daily life? How do we remain faithful to the Christ who owns us? A double response: filled with faith, and keeping faith.

Filled with Faith. We should not have a relationship with Christ that reaches only an intellectual profession: “I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord, born of the Virgin Mary…” This is important, indeed, but it is not enough.

My whole self must reach out to Him – mind and heart, will and emotion. Such faith alone is alive with love. Such faith alone is the Christian response to the Love that is crucified for me, the loving person apart from whom I can do nothing.

Such faith makes it possible for me to keep faith. Because I have entrusted myself completely to Christ, he can trust me completely. Because I love him, I will be like him. And the more I’m like him, the more likely I am to keep faith with him even unto crucifixion – “Not my will, but Yours be done.”

Furthermore, we are Christian faithful, because we are faithful to the Body of Christ, are committed to the community of Christ. Precisely here lies the agonizing heart of our contemporary Catholic concern: What does it mean to be faithful to the community, to the Church?

It would be fairly simple if all of us were of a single mind. But we are not. We are dreadfully divided in so many issues.

There are indifferent Catholics, Sunday Catholics, foxhole Catholics, social Catholics, KBL Catholics (Kasal, Bunyag, Libing meaning ‘wedding, baptism, and burial’) Catholics, way-out Catholics, Catholics who are trying desperately to be faithful.

Still, it’s a struggle: between the clear call from Rome and the crucifying confusion of home and environment; between Gospel message and its challenges and our struggling to survive in this “dog-eat-dog” world, in a culture that confuses what is popular, or legal with what is moral.

How then to be faithful – full of faith and keeping faith? First, a word from Proverbs: Fidelity is where you are – faithfulness is here and now.

The wife of Proverbs was not planning how to be faithful in her old age. Fidelity was right there. Fidelity was to husband and children, servants, and merchants, the poor of God. To each of these she had pledged herself, and she was a woman of her word.

And so for us – fidelity is here and now. You have pledged yourself. To whom? To the Christian community, to live this day in holiness of heart, in sinlessness, somewhat as Christ our Lord lived.

From your humble “Lord have mercy” to the “Amen” you murmur to “the Body of Christ,” you are saying to one another, “I am part of you, I belong to you, you can trust me.”

And now, the word from Matthew. Christian fidelity calls for risk. Which of the servants were called “faithful?” Not the ‘segurista’, the servant who played it safe and hid his thousand silver pieces in the ground. Only the servants who took a chance, who traded the money their master had entrusted to them.

And so for you, it is one thing to be faithful, when the issues are crystal clear, when you know people will react favorably, when it doesn’t cost anything and doesn’t threaten your way of life.

It is quite another thing to grope in darkness, when you are not sure, when you are afraid, when discipleship costs, when you must lose your life in order to find it, when the Lord simply says, “You have your gifts, my church and your conscience, my grace and your good sense. Trade them till I come.”

When the Master comes He will not ask how often you were right, but how honestly you tried, not how brilliant you were, but how loving.

Lastly, the word from Paul: Fidelity is a Christ, who comes in unexpected ways.

If you want to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant” from Christ riding clouds of glory, then welcome him when he comes hungry and thirsty, lonely and unloved, imprisoned by all kinds of fears, victim of wars, injustice and exploitation.

To be faithful, all you have to do is touch each hand that is stretched out to you. Examine at the end of each day: “How have I met Jesus today? Have I reached out to him?”