19th Sunday 2025
Wisdom 18:6-9; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke12:32-48
“Everyone to whom much was given, of them much will be required.”
What have you been given? Not much, if you take heed of the moaners and groaners who appear to form a considerable portion of our society. According to them, whatever they had has been taken away; and everything, and particularly this country, is going to hell in a handcart.
Are they correct? Indeed, there are people who are in the grip of poverty, but they tend not to be among the moaners and groaners. The genuine poor are too busy trying to make ends meet to waste their time complaining. It is generally the relatively comfortable who have the leisure to bemoan their lot. It is difficult not to feel that, if they were given everything, they would still find something to grumble about. Frequently, what is involved is attitude rather than reality. Negativity is a very easy state of mind to develop, but it is destructive, addictive, contagious, and sinful.
What then of you and me? We must resist the temptation towards negative attitudes, because they will take us over and, by degrees, destroy us. We need always to consider and reflect upon our blessings, developing a positive mindset, recognising what is good, and consequently being motivated to improve what is less than good.
We have indeed been given a great deal. Indeed, we have been given everything, because we have been given Jesus Christ, God the Son, as one of us. Through our Baptism, we have been given new life in Him; we have, through Baptism and Confirmation, received the Holy Spirit. Similarly, we have been given the Mass, the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the ongoing presence of Jesus’ own sacrifice, which He offered through His life, and particularly through His suffering, death, and resurrection.
Every time we come to Mass, we encounter Christ in the gathering of His people, in His word proclaimed in the Scriptures, in the person of the priest, and in the Sacrament and Sacrifice of His Body and Blood. We have too His abiding presence in the tabernacle, His healing presence in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and in the Sacrament of the Sick, and for some in the Sacraments of Matrimony or Holy Orders.
Furthermore, we have been granted membership of the Church, the Body of Christ, united with our brothers and sisters throughout the world, in communion with them and with those who have gone before us throughout the ages, gathered in union and communion with the successor of Peter. I always cringe when I hear the term “our Church”: it isn’t OUR Church, it is the Church of Christ, and we are members of it, of Him, and of one another. Nor is it our Church as distinct from other people’s Church: it is THE Church, and it is His.
Likewise, we have been given the gift of faith which, as the Letter to the Hebrews points out, must be fulfilled in action, as it was by Abraham and Sarah, and by the other patriarchs and saints. This is where we encounter the demand, of which Jesus speaks in the Gospel.
Faith has been given to us, not to lie fallow, or to be brought out only on Sundays, though it must be brought out then, as we recognise our communion with our brothers and sisters, and fulfil part of our duty to God. It needs to be the driving force of our lives.
More and more we seek to entrust our lives to God. Like Abraham, we are constantly on a journey. We do not know from day to day what God will ask of us, as Abraham did not know where his journey would lead.
Each day we are called to recognise the events of that day as elements of our call from God. What is God asking of us when such or such a thing happens, when something unexpected occurs, or even when life appears to be a matter of routine?
Perhaps we do not know. We need therefore to be people who reflect, who ponder the events of our lives, to consider what God may be saying to us among them. Above all, as Our Lord’s parables remind us, we need to be people who realise that He is always among us, always within us; that His coming to us relates not only to our death, but is a reality of every day.
