Here is my homily from last night’s Mass. God bless all!
If tonight’s Gospel sounds familiar, it should. Last Sunday’s Gospel was from Matthew in which we heard the same parable we hear tonight from St. Luke. God gifts his people and expects us to use the gifts given to benefit the Kingdom of God.
These two raccountings of the parable teach us two basic realities of our relationship with God, I believe.
The first is God loves each of us completely. Yes, God loves each and every one of you totally! It is easy to think that He must love someone to whom He has given “ten gold coins” more than He loves someone to whom He gave only two, but this is only a human way of understanding God’s love. God loves each of us and gives each of us everything we need. There is no limit to God’s love for us, only our capacity to receive that love. There is no cause, then, for jealousy or rivalry among us. There is no need to get ahead of someone else, or to compete with someone spiritually. We cannot earn God’s love because He freely gives it to each of us, and He gives it fully.
The second is this: Sin never has the last say in our lives, excepting if we draw our last breath rejecting God’s love and grace. We all sin. We all fail to fully appreciate, accept and use the gifts and graces that God gives us. We all say, “No” to God’s will more often than we want to admit, but these sins do not define us unless and until the moment of our death we reject God’s love. Only then will sin define us and we are then cast into the darkness forever. The Gospel reminds us of this also. It is difficult to read or to hear.
Let us, sometime this evening before retiring for the night, spend some time trying to appreciate God’s complete love for us. Let us be open to experiencing His love and His presence in our lives. And let us praise Him for this love!
