Homily for Tuesday
32d Week of Ordinary Time
Nov.
12, 2024
Luke
17: 7-10
Christian
Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.
The Unprofitable Servant
(by Eugene Burnand)
“We are
unprofitable servants” (Luke 17: 10).
I preached on
this text last year, and of course those of you who were here all remember that! Or not.
Sometimes the
verse is rendered, “We’re worthless servants.”
It means our service doesn’t draw pay or benefit. We make no profit from it.
The note
attached to this parable in the NAB tells
us that it reminds the apostles “that Christian disciples can make no claim on
God’s graciousness; in fulfilling the exacting demands of discipleship, they
are only doing their duty.”
And how many
of us perfectly fulfill our duty? Who
hasn’t fallen short? Who hasn’t sinned?
So we all
depend upon grace. God the Father thru
his Son Jesus freely pardons us and gladly recognizes our efforts, however
faulty and feeble. In another parable, 5
chapters earlier in Luke, Jesus calls “blessed those servants whom the master
finds vigilant on his arrival,” and he says the master “will gird himself, have
them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them” (12:37).
We can say
happily, Jesus our master has turned the tables on us (pun intended). He who calls us his friends, not his servants
(John 15:13-15), graciously serves us—at his Eucharistic table and, we trust,
will serve us also at his heavenly banquet; not because we’ve earned such a
profit, such a blessing, but because he loves us so much.
No comments:
Post a Comment