“What Do We Do While We Wait?” by Colleen O’Sullivan

“What Do We Do While We Wait?” by Colleen O’Sullivan

Wednesday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time

“Worthy are you, Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things; because of your will they came to be and were created.” (Revelation 4:11)

 

So, he said, “A nobleman went off to a distant country to obtain the kingship for himself and then to return.  He called ten of his servants and gave them ten gold coins and told them, ‘Engage in trade with these until I return.’  (Luke 19:11-15)

Piety

Suscipe

   St. Ignatius of Loyola

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.

You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
That is enough for me.

Study   

In John’s magnificent vision of the heavenly throne, the 24 elders prostrate themselves before the throne and praise God as Creator.  They acknowledge that the only reason we exist is that God wants us to.  Everything we are and all that we have come from the Lord.  That is also the essence of the Suscipe prayer.  Acknowledge the One who gives us all that we have and are.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus and the disciples are approaching Jerusalem, where the disciples believe God’s reign will shortly appear.  Jesus knows their thoughts, and he knows they may have to wait a while, so he tells them this parable about a nobleman who has gone off to procure a kingship.  While he is absent, he asks his servants to do something with the gold coins he entrusts to them.

When he finally returns, kingship in hand, he discovers that one of the servants has doubled his money and another has earned a 50% return.  A third, however, sat on his money and made nothing.  And that didn’t sit well with the landowner at all.

Think about all that God has given us, we who are God’s sons and daughters.  It’s a long time since Jesus died on the Cross and rose on the third day, and it’s all too easy to become complacent about when Christ will return in glory.  But Jesus Christ will return at some point, and he’ll see whatever we’ve done with God’s gifts.

From the very beginning, God entrusted us with the care of all of creation.  Were we called today to account for the job we’ve done so far, how would we explain our skies and oceans’ pollution?  It seemed that when all the world was in lockdown last spring and summer, a fantastic thing happened.  With hardly any auto or industrial emissions pouring into the environment, people everywhere could see more clearly and breathe more deeply than we have in generations.  We are killing ourselves by our cavalier attitude toward our planet.  We need to strike a better balance between our economies and how we look after the world God has left in our keeping.

God also gave us a world full of brothers and sisters, families, and friends.  Jesus told us the second greatest commandment is to love one another. Still, our actions in past months (and years and centuries) have reinforced the truth that rather than care for one another, we often despise one another based on skin color, language spoken, country of origin, or the faith at the heart of our identity.  It’s a tremendous task to undo the deeply held prejudices we carry in our hearts, but God asks us to love one another because we are all God’s children and members of one family.

Action

Some of our brothers and sisters work tirelessly, pouring out their lifeblood for the good of God’s creation – both the world in which we reside and all God’s children who live here with us.  That’s the kind of effort the landowner in the parable applauded.  Others are like the third servant, just here for the ride, not working on the Owner’s behalf.

Jesus does not tell this parable as a threat; instead, it is a wake-up call.  God truly desires that out of love for our Creator; we invest whatever we have on behalf of the world we live in and the people with whom we live.