33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time

What did the third servant do with his bag of money?

A lecture hall in Cologne, Germany, around 1248. At the front stands a Dominican friar in a white habit, teaching about everything: planets, weather, animals, plants, the Greek philosophers. His name is Albert, and his students call him “the Great” while he is still alive. God had given him a mind that wanted to know everything, and St. Albert decided early that there was no danger in that, because God made it all. Every fact about a beetle or a comet was a small window onto its Maker.

Who was the big, quiet student St. Albert believed in when nobody else did?

Hand each child a coin marked with a cross at bedtime, tell them it is their “talent” to spend on someone else this week, and say “Well done, good and faithful servant” together.

In Jesus’ story, a talent is a very large amount of money that the master lends to his servants. Because of this story, we now use the word for any gift God gives a person to use for others.

Well done, good and faithful servant, because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

Why was the master so mean to the servant who kept his money safe? He didn’t lose any of it.

Lord Jesus, you lent us everything we have: our hands, our minds, our voices, our home. Help us not to hide them, but to use them for the people around us. When you come back, let us hear you say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” St. Albert the Great, pray for us. Amen.

April 20, 1568, was a day of great festivities at the castle of Castiglione, in Lombardy. Hundreds of high-ranking guests thronged the spacious halls and the lovely gardens. The best and richest tapestries hung from the walls; orchestras played at a dozen different points; the fountains in the ornamental lakes rose high and straight, as though to rival the towering cypresses around them.

Green vestments today, and next Sunday is the last one of the whole Church year. Listen for the master’s words in the Gospel, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” said twice; have the kids count. The first reading is about a hard-working wife whose hands are never idle, and the second reading warns that “the day of the Lord” comes like a thief in the night. The readings are turning toward the end of the world on purpose; that is November.

There is an old story of a man who died and went up to heaven. He knocked at the gate and was admitted, though somewhat grudgingly, by St. Peter, who asked one of the angels, attendant at the gate for this purpose, to show the new arrival to his mansion. The angel led him through the streets of heaven with their dazzling mansions built of precious stones; the very streets were paved with precious stones, so that he could scarcely believe that heaven itself could be so beautiful. As they went on, they came to streets where all the mansions were built of purest gold; these gave way to mansions of silver, then to handsome villas of cut stone, and finally, to the newcomer's surprise, to plain bricks and mortar and even to ferroconcrete. But still they went on until at last, on the very outskirts of the celestial city, the angel pointed out to him his mansion, a mere shack built of a few boards nailed together, with, believe it or not, a corrugated iron roof. When he was assigned to this accommodation, the poor soul could not altogether hide his disappointment, and the angel, noticing it, said to him: "Yes, I am afraid it is a poor sort of place, but, you know, we did the very best we could with the materials you sent up."

Tuesday is St. Elizabeth of Hungary: the activity is baking bread to give away, so check that you have flour and yeast (or a bake-and-serve loaf) and think of a neighbor to deliver it to. Wednesday needs a picture of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, from a book, a postcard, or a phone. Next Sunday, November 22, is Christ the King, the last Sunday of the Church year; the kids will make crowns, so save cardboard or cardstock. Advent begins in two weeks, Sunday, November 29.