Homily for Tuesday, Week 32 of Ordinary Time

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.