Proverbs 31: Give her a share in what she has worked for

Happy are those who fear the Lord

1 Thessalonians 5: 1-6 The day of the Lord is going to come like  a thief in the night.

Matthew 25: 14-30 Because you have been faithful over a few things, enter into the joy of your Lord.

With all the major news items this week around the APEC Meeting in Beijing and the G20 meeting in Brisbane, you may ha e missed another important news item.

Neil Balme is leaving Geelong!! This week, the Football Manager of the Geelong Football Club, who has helped carry Geelong through the past 7 years and achieved three AFL Premierships, is leaving to take up a similar role with the dreaded foe Collingwood! 

Now I could bang on for ages about this,  and for most of you what I have to say would make very little sense, have zero impact on your life, and you’d be left wondering why I was bothering you with this bit of footy trivia!

Has it ever happened to you that you have tried talking to someone about something really important to you and the other person not only has no idea what you’re talking about, but also has no interest, and has no intention of allowing what you are saying to make any difference to their lives?

Well, Jesus in our story today finds himself in much the same boat.  The Sadducees were part of the Jewish religious leadership group, and in general they had no interest in being what God wanted  Israel to be, namely a “light to the nations.” 

It is clear that they were more interested in their own power and preserving their own status, and making sure the money was rolling into the Temple coffers so that they could continue to live in the manner to which they had  become accustomed.

They really didn’t like Jesus and the way he was going about upsetting their lifestyle.  He was offering God’s gifts not only to the poor of Israel, but to people from other nations and people who had never even heard of the Jewish faith and their God. This was not to be tolerated.

They had no interest in his stories and had no wish to allow them to impact on their well-constructed predictable lives!

This is the setting for the parable.  We’ve only read a shorter version of it today but you can catch the full episode in Matthew’s 25th Chapter.

In Jesus’ story, the talents that the master entrusted to the servants would have been precious metal, gold or silver, about 25 kilograms each.  So what the master was handing out was pretty huge especially in the minds of many of Jesus’ hearers who were quite poor.

The idea that the talents should bear fruit and double their value somehow is really Jesus’ way of saying, “Let’s take this wonderful gift of faith which is beyond price, and let others have a share of it.  Let it grow, spread, increase, so that many will come to know the value of knowing and loving the one true God.”

Now the many gifts that we have been given are meant for us to develop and enjoy.  By their very nature they are also meant to be shared and are only at their best when we share them.

There is a Greek word used in the New Testament “Charis”, the word for gift.  This word refers to our gifts that are created specifically  to be enjoyed and shared by others, for the building up of the community.

When a new baby arrives among us, we all want to share in the life of the new arrival. When someone becomes engaged, passes an exam, gets married, wins an award, completes a degree, as many people as possible want to share in the event.

We do this sharing very naturally and almost without thinking.  It’s almost automatic for us.

Why is it then that so many people suffer alone? Why is it that three quarters of the world’s children go to bed hungry every night.  Why is it that people in some parts of Australia,  have to wait over twelve months for life-saving surgery?

Why is it that our automatic desire to share our gifts with each other seems to go off the rails and we leave so many people living without even the most basic of life’s gifts? We could produce a long litany of people who are missing out, who are excluded, who are ignored. You can make up your own list as you reflect during our Eucharist.

The way we use our gifts is very important for the well-being of the world around us.

The gifts God has given us, like the talents in the parable, are really priceless, and their value will only be increased and they will only be truly enjoyed, when we dare to share them well.

This week, we could each choose one gift we would like to share with someone.  We could make it a gift we haven’t shared very often and make it a person that we’ve not really shared much with before.  Listen then to how our heart responds when we dare to offer our gift in places where our gift has never been and look out for the delight we will cause in the heart of another.

Given the tragic event at Joey’s this week we would do well to offer one another an extra gift of an attentive,  listening ear, a gift of compassion and the gift of holding our children close and letting each one of them know how precious they are to us.

We may even hear God’s voice echoing in our own heart: “Well done good and faithful servant, you have been faithful in a few things. I will entrust you now with much greater things Come and join in your master’s happiness.”

While the departure of Geelong’s Football Manager may not mean much to anyone outside the sacred boundaries of the Geelong Footy Club, the gifts you have the courage to break open and share may become a gift beyond your present circle of family and friends, beyond your normal field of influence, and maybe even beyond your lifetime. 

In our Saints, Prophets and Heroes we have plenty of such examples.  There’s nothing to stop us joining them!

Ezekiel 47: 1-2, 8-9, 12 I see water flowing from the temple and all who were touched by it were saved
The waters of the river gladden the city of God
1 Corinthians 3: 9-1, 16-17 You are the Temple of God
John 2: 13-22 He spoke about the temple of his own body

The Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica falls on November 9 each year and this year it has landed on a Sunday. It provides us with a good change of diet from the regular run of Sunday readings and is an invitation for us to reflect on what the Feast means and why make such a fuss about it!
From the very early days of our history, the Church of Rome was seen to be a sign of unity among all Christians, a sort of Mother watching over her children. The great Second Century Saint Ignatius of Antioch described the Church in Rome as “Carefully Presiding over the whole assembly of charity.”
When some of us hear the Church of Rome being spoken about with tenderness and love, the sceptical part of us may have some doubts as we peer through the first door of the Lateran Basilica.
Through this door of the Basilica, our eyes may well stray to the memories we hold of the Church of Rome presiding over such adventures as the very bloody Crusades of the Middle Ages, the invasion of the Americas by Catholic conquistadors accompanied by armies and imposing the Christian way of life on peoples with the assistance of military muscle. (The tactics of today’s ISIS are really nothing new!!)
We may also remember the abuses of the Inquisition and the execution of women as witches because they dared to think for themselves.

Then of course in more recent times, the culture of clericalism and its accompanying code of secrecy that Pope Francis is so determined to bring to an end. It goes without saying that the culture of child sexual abuse in the Church went hand in hand with such clericalism and secrecy.
We could stop there, and our vision of Holy Mother Church would indeed be a pretty desperate one, leaving us wondering what the heck we are still doing here. From here all we see of the Church are its stories of corruption and sinfulness.

We can however, rouse ourselves from this sad litany and look through a couple of other doors of the Lateran Basilica and there we may well see the Church of Rome in a different hue.
One door may open to find people like St Benedict who has graced us with his wonderful, wise and earthy rule of life that has stood the test of time through so many centuries.

We might see the daring young Francis shaking the town of Assisi to life as he stripped off his clothes and walked naked down the main street, giving himself completely over to the Jesus who was stripped bare on the cross for him. We might see the likes of St Dominic preaching the Good News where hearts had not had the chance to hear it. Further up the road we might encounter Teresa of Avila on her horse, riding between monasteries that she established as a new form and powerful form of dedicated life.
There’s Ignatius of Loyola and the mighty family he left behind who continue to all our world to justice, and who have gifted us with our present Holy Father.

In more recent times we may see a humble priest, Peter Chanel giving his all for a people who mistook his kind gentleness as political interference in their tribal wars. Another door may open and reveal to us a vast array of people of faith who gave us the music, art, philosophy, science which formed the very spine of European culture for centuries.


There’s another door of this mighty Basilica which has only been opened recently, and through this door we might see Mother Teresa of Calcutta bringing dignity and comfort to some of the poorest of people. There we might also see Archbishop Oscar Romero, who started his time as Archbishop as a very conservative Church leader who then heard the cry of the poor, oppressed in his country of El Salvador and as he said, “the people converted me.” He ended up giving his life for the peace of his nation.


On the Basilica’s southern side there’s a door that opens on Australia and here we can see the beautiful face of Mary MacKillop who gave herself so that the poorest children might have a good education. What stories she has left us and what joy she has occasioned in us. Then there are countless people who today work in many fields such as education, health care, welfare, working for justice, research, science and the arts. Thousands upon thousands including your good selves who are seeking daily to live the life of the gospel.
These are just a few little glimpses of the Church to which we belong. Keep looking and you’ll find more through the lens of your own vision.

We are indeed a wounded, fractious, messy, sinful lot. We are also one great source of hope for peoples all around the world as we seek to show the face of God’s love as Jesus has revealed this face to us.
Holding this Church in our hearts, we come now to the table where broken bread, a reminder of our broken selves, becomes our Bread of Life, and wine poured out becomes the pattern for our own self-giving as it has been down the centuries for so many others.
We join with this great procession of believers, in a celebration of thanks for the God who finds life, hope and grace, in the places of our hearts and our world we had never dared imagine.

Isaiah 45: 1; 4-6 I have taken the hand of Cyrus to subdue the nations before his countenance
Give the Lord glory and honour
1 Thess 1: 1-5 We are mindful of your faith, hope and love.
Matthew 22: 15-21 Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.

In this little scene from the gospel, you would think Jesus was sitting for the HSC! The Pharisees were constantly trying to put trick questions to Jesus to see if he would put his foot in it. Jesus, having studied well and learnt well, has very good footwork and easily evades the traps they set for him, gives them more than they bargained for in his answers .

Jesus was a good student of his people’s story. No doubt he had learned much from his family, and the religious and other leaders as he was growing up. He was keenly aware of his people’s suffering at the hands of the Roman occupation forces and at the hands of the Jewish religious leaders who were collaborating with them.

He had a very keen sense of justice and never hesitated to point out injustices when he saw them. In fact, he was free enough to call everything exactly as he saw it and this is what got him into trouble.

It seems his critics aren’t looking for truth. They prefer people who share their own views and they aren’t too impressed when a truth is expressed that is truer than the truth they have been holding on to. The tellers of these truths are dangerous because if their ideas take hold, then we will lose our positions of power and influence, and then where would we all be?

It’s necessary to make the tellers of these truths disappear, because dead men tell no tales! This is exactly what happened to Jesus. The only problem is that the truth of his story outlasted his human life here and in his rising from the dead, both he and his story are still alive and well, and the world has indeed changed.

His ideas are still as dangerous and challenging as they ever were.

When we listen to Jesus responding to the Pharisees today, we hear him setting everyone free to do what they judge best, to render to God what is God’s and to render to Caesar what is his. He leaves us, and more, calls on each of us to be free enough to take personal responsibility for the choices we make, for the faith that we embrace and for the causes we proclaim.

It is this freedom that St Paul praises in his touching words to the Thessalonians. Let’s listen to him again:

“We always mention you in our prayers and thank God for you all, and constantly remember before God our Father how you have shown your faith in action, worked for love and persevered through hope, in our Lord Jesus Christ. We know brothers and sisters, that God loves you and that you have been chosen, because when we brought the Good News to you , it came to you not only as words, but as power and as the Holy Spirit and utter conviction.”

We’d be pretty safe saying that while we are all on the way to this inner freedom, this passion for truth and justice, this faith in Jesus grace at work in us, none of us is perfectly free. So it’s good that we pray for one another that we continue to grow in this freedom which is God’s own hope for us.

Having said that, we can look around our own little community here and see eloquent expressions of this freedom which Paul praises so gently.

• We see the energy and delight with which our Pastoral Council members and others prepared for the Parish Dinner, and the joy everyone took on the occasion. People were talking about it all through this past week. One of our veteran parishioners commented to me that is was one of the very best parish events he’s been to.
  
  
• On Tuesday our small but energetic Social Justice Group met. Apart from the three projects we are engaged in, there again was a clear and generous spirit, openness to each other’s points of view and a desire to do our best for those in special need and to engage in the most difficult task of speaking about and acting about injustice. 

• Then on Wednesday evening our lively Liturgy group gathered to review our Feast Day Mass the other week, to begin planning for Advent and Christmas and to reflect on the general issues around our liturgical life that we’d like to address further. Two new members joined us and we rewarded ourselves with a little party! St Paul would have been pleased with the lively grace of this group.
  
  
• Then there is our dear Norma Brosnan who has lived most of her life in our parish and contributed so much to the parish and the wider local community. Norma had a stroke last Sunday and is in a stable condition in hospital. Her free spirit still shines through her injured body, much in the manner that Jesus’ spirit of love shone through his broken body on the Cross. St Paul would surely want to catch her up in his arms and his words.
  
  
• Along the same lines we have Suzi Hajje who had further brain surgery this week and ever since has being filling the pages of Facebook with stories about how well she is with lots of accompanying photos. In her illness she becomes a gift of joy for so many of us.
  
  These are just five instances among the countless graces that you all bring to our life together here. Listen to St Paul one more time, grateful for the inspiration of those around you, and grateful for the inspiration you bring us all.
  
  “We always mention you in our prayers and thank God for you all, and constantly remember before God our Father how you have shown your faith in action, worked for love and persevered through hope, in our Lord Jesus Christ. We know brothers and sisters, that God loves you and that you have been chosen, because when we brought the Good News to you , it came to you not only as words, but as power and as the Holy Spirit and utter conviction.” 
  
  

Isaiah 5, 1-7 The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel
Phil 4: 6-9 Do these things and the God of peace will be with you
Matthew 21; 33-43 He leased his vineyard to other farmers.

 Let’s listen to St Paul again for a moment:

 Fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honour, and everything that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise. Then the God of peace will be with you.

 In our gospel reading we have a parable of Jesus where people acted with great dishonour, acted ignobly, acted out of greed and envy, and acted untruthfully.

 As we sit here, each one of us is probably somewhere between these two poles, and hopefully towards the end of the spectrum that St Paul urges us to embrace.

 As we sit here, our nation and our world are lurching around in-between these two poles as well.  Many people, and many of them unknown, are living heroic lives, striving to transform their world into the world that God entrusted to us, a world where everyone has an opportunity to live with dignity and freedom, a world in which everyone has the choice to seek the good, the noble, the beautiful, the virtuous.

 Similarly as we sit here, much of our world is in the grip of fear, terror, anger and prejudice. Our own happy-go-lucky nation is bit by bit being infected with fear of the most recent arrivals to our shores.   When you think of it and reflect on our history, we’ve always been a bit like this and at the moment the temperature in the room has gone up a few notches to the point where we are having absurd arguments about what people may or not wear when they visit parliament!

 At this time we are holding over one thousand children in detention centres in Australia and in off-shore facilities.

 Last week our Government, with the support of the Labor Opposition, sealed a deal with Cambodia, one of the most brutal, secretive and poorest nations in Asia.  We offered them $40 million dollars in assistance and they agreed to take a handful of asylum seekers from Nauru.  These people we are told can freely choose to re-settle in Cambodia.  Their options are limited to this choice: to re-settle in Cambodia, to stay on Nauru indefinitely in the tents provided, sleeping six men to a tent, or to return to the countries from which they fled in fear – some choice they have.

 Our Government, again largely with the support of the Opposition is seeking to re-introduce Temporary Protection Visas for people seeking refuge here, so that they can live and work in the community on a temporary basis.  Under the Howard Government, 98% of  people on Temporary Protection Visas eventually became permanent citizens.  Under the proposed new TPV’s, they will have to reapply for a new temporary visa every three years for the rest of their lives, thus being condemned to live in permanent insecurity.

 People in the public services related to asylum-seeker policy are now instructed to refer to people seeking asylum as illegal.  In fact they are perfectly within their rights to have sought asylum here and are in no way illegal according to Australian and International law.

 These policies are popular with the majority of Australians.  We elected our members of Parliament in part on the basis of these policies which they are now implementing.

 The Record, the quarterly bulletin of the St Vincent de Paul Society in its latest issue has a full treatment of the Vinnies Refugee Policy which was finalized this time last year.

 It is a thoughtful, thorough, practical and compassionate document.  If you want some intelligent and honest reading around this issue I recommend the Vinnies Record to you.  Any of our St Vincent de Paul members can tell you how to access it and I will put the Web address on our bulletin next week.

 Our Australian Catholic Bishops in May this year released their statement on our treatment of people seeking asylum.  In part they write:

 The policy can win acceptance only if the asylum seekers are kept faceless and nameless. It depends upon a process of de-humanisation. Such a policy would be widely rejected if the faces and names were known. Bishops have seen the faces; we know the names; we have heard the stories. That is why we say now, Enough of this institutionalised cruelty. We join with the Catholic Bishops of Papua New Guinea who have voiced their strong opposition to the use of Manus Island for detention. They have urged Australia “to find a more humane solution to people seeking asylum”. We do not accept the need for off-shore processing. But even if it continues, it surely does not require such harshness.

 The Government and Opposition want to stop the boats and thwart the people-smugglers. But does this require such cruelty? Could not the same goals be achieved by policies, which were less harsh, even humane – policies which respected not only our international obligations but also basic human rights? Can we not achieve a balance between the needs of people in desperate trouble and the electoral pressures faced by politicians? We believe we can; indeed we must – The time has come to examine our conscience and to act differently.

 Let’s listen to St Paul once again:

 Fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honour, and everything that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise. Then the God of peace will be with you.

 In the light of his encouragement to us, can we hope for the God of peace to be with us, while ever we support policies and practices that are anything but noble, true, just, virtuous or wise? Violent, punitive behaviour, behaviour based on fear rather than love, can never ever lead to true peace.

Let’s listen to the truth of our own hearts and ask ourselves how we can possibly reconcile our behaviours as a nation with the call of the gospel