“Now during these last few weeks of the Liturgical season in the Gospels we start to look at the end time. Last week or the week before it was talking about the five virgins waiting for their master to come back and what would they do when he does? Would they have the oil? This week it has a similar type of story of the master going away, giving his servants talents and then when he comes back what do they have to show for it? Again, reflecting on the end time. How often do you think of your death? Do you ever think about what you would be or what you would do on your deathbed or maybe what would you regret? What would you regret on your deathbed? What do you regret now? One thing I find interesting of people who have regrets on their deathbed is that it’s never a regret of something they did, it’s always a regret of something they didn’t do. It was never a mistake they made, but a mistake that they never did it. It was a fear that kept them from doing it. That was always the regret, the fear. In my own life I’ve seen it too, a fear that kept me from fulfilling my potential. Here’s a story of growing up- I’m Vietnamese if you didn’t know and we grew up speaking Vietnamese, but I lost a lot of the language when I went to school because we speak English, so I was always afraid to use my Vietnamese with my family because I kind of knew it, but I didn’t know if I really knew it, so I would just not speak Vietnamese at home, but when I went to Vietnam on my own I realized I knew more Vietnamese than I gave myself credit for. The fear was no longer there because either I use it or I can’t, so I forced myself to do it and I realized there was much more there than I expected, but it was really getting over the hump of the fear.
In today’s Gospel there is this master who gives the three servants talents. Now first we have to say, what is a talent? Well a talent is kind of similar to say a gold or silver coin. It’s a certain currency and now he gives five talents to one, two to another and one to the last, but each talent isn’t worth little. Maybe today one talent would be worth $1,000 so it is substantial. Now here the last servant is the only one who didn’t do anything with it out of fear of his master; he dug it in a hole and just gave it back to him. The kicker, what the mast says, ‘for those who have much, more will be given and for those who have none, even what you have will be taken away.’ It sounds cruel, but it’s kind of this paradoxical principle. It’s a risk. If you look at economics for say, if you want it to grow you have to risk it. We all have investments and investing your money might be a small risk or a big risk, but you’re still taking a risk and each one of these servants, the first two, they had to risk it to gain more and the one who failed to risk out of fear even what he had was taken away. The principle is that you have to give it away to gain more and I think Christ is really talking about our faith. The one thing he really gives us that’s so important, more important than we can really imagine and to gain and to grow your faith, the paradox is that you have to give it away for it to grow. What is keeping you from sharing your faith with others, keeping it to yourself? The one way for your faith to really die and not grow is to just keep it to yourself. That I can promise you, but it’s just like say, look at your relationship with your best friend or your spouse. For that to die, you would have to stop giving yourself to the other, but the more you give of yourself to the other, the more you get back and it continues to grow. It’s only in fear, fear of giving ourselves to the other that we slowly die, our soul dies even the relationship might die, but it’s the same with our faith. It’s in giving that we receive. So, how have you shared your faith in your life? How have you not? What is keeping you from sharing your faith in your life? It’s hard in the culture today, but do you say your meal prayers when you are out in public? Maybe that’s an example because everything we do is supposed to evangelize the world outside and so every small and every big moment is sharing your faith with others, but it’s only fear that keeps us. As you come before the Lord today where Christ is truly present before you in the Eucharist, let us have the strength and the courage to acknowledge the fears in our life, to give it to Christ so that he can give us the grace and nourish and sustain our lives so that we can share our faith with others and that he may share his life with us. Amen.”