Opening Mass of the academic year

It was early on a Tuesday morning, a little after 8 AM. I was down in front of the stage arranging the weekly assembly with the student council. We were just starting the assembly when a student came down to me in a hurry. I knew him well. His family was from eastern Germany and he was not religious. He told me “I just heard on the radio: an airplane flew into the World Trade Center in New York City.” That did not make sense to me. I had lived in NYC, in Manhattan. Planes just don’t fly into tall buildings like that. “A private plane?” I asked. “No, a commercial airliner.” He said, “Maybe we should pray for the people on that plane.” After the assembly, the student council and I went to their office and we watched on TV as the second plane struck the world trade center. That morning a good friend of mine living in a high-rise building near the Pentagon in Virginia watched an airliner roar past his apartment on its way to strike the Pentagon. That morning as we all watched, the world changed dramatically in just a few minutes. It did not change for the better.

I wish that you could live in the world as it was before that Tuesday morning, exactly 22 years ago today, on 9-11-2001. Almost 3,000 people suddenly lost their lives that morning, two of whom were friends of one of our student council officers whom I was with then. They had been interning at the Windows on the World restaurant. Most of those killed were ordinary people who just went to work on another routine Tuesday morning. Some were heroes, like the emergency responders or the passengers that overcame the hijackers and crashed their plane in rural Pennsylvania before it could do any harm. And then there was a group of middle school students off on a school trip to the west coast on that plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Young, old, middle aged; students, interns, workers, retirees – the disaster that morning did not discriminate.

Suddenly these persons, young and old were called to meet their Lord, and give an accounting of what they had done with the all the gifts they had been given, just like Jesus describes to us in today’s Gospel. Some of them were probably ready; some likely not. But most of us are probably not quite ready for our end. I know I’m not. And it’s probably the last thing on your minds on this first day of classes. But each of our ends will come, just like final exams at the end of the term or school year. So, the parable Jesus tells us today can produce a little bit of anxiety as exams do. But keep in mind that the parable is a story teaching a lesson: it’s not a straightforward relating of facts. So, we shouldn’t stress about all the details; we should just get the main message. We should recall Jesus’ other straightforward words to us. In St Luke’s Gospel, he says: Don’t be afraid; the Father is happy to give you the kingdom.

So, what is the message of this parable today? We may misunderstand because Jesus speaks of talents. The talents Jesus speaks of are not the talents, the skills, that we have, although they are included in a metaphorical sense. A talent was a measure of weight, and the talents he speaks of are weights of silver or gold. If of silver, a talent was about 130 lbs. or worth 20 years of labor. If of gold, the talent was 75 lbs. I checked the latest prices, and today one talent would be worth $40,000 of silver and $2.18 million of gold. So even the servant with just one talent had a LOT of money. In the place of the master, we can see God, who gives each of us the gift of life and the many blessings that come with it. These blessings are represented by the silver and gold. We have many gifts, including our personal talents, which we use in our lives. We also have our family, our health, our economic security. Probably our most basic talent is the ability to relate to others, to be a friend and to be friendly, kind and charitable. Also, the ability to relate to and be thankful to God for our lives, despite the inevitable problems that we have. We have other abilities of course. Some have a talent for art or for business, or for sports, for leadership, for scholarship. Some are physically strong while others are mentally strong; some are both. Whatever we have, it is all an investment by God in life, not just in our own individual lives, but in the life of the world, in the lives of others, an investment in the life of the human family. If we are blessed, we are meant to be a blessing for others. God looks to us to enrich the world by using our gifts for others.

And so, two of the servants did that. They put their talents and ability to work; they enriched the estate of the master, and so they were given even more to work with. But that servant with one talent did not. He buried his talent in the ground. He was too cautious, too afraid, not willing to risk anything, not willing to share. His thoughts were only on fear of his master’s power and he did not consider His master’s trust and high regard for Him. His talent did not do anyone any good, not the servant, not the master, not the society he lived in. So, when the master took the talent away from him, that servant was really not deprived. The servant lived as if he never had that talent in the first place. So, the master, God, was not a harsh, cruel judge. But the servant, while he was actually rich, lived like he had nothing and prepared himself only for the darkness, where the weeping is that of regret and realization of his own stupidity. The result could not have been any different. That servant judged himself, and created the result that finally came about.

And just so we create the results that come from the way we live our lives by the way we use all that God has given us, all our advantages, talents and opportunities. God is looking to us for some kind of a return on his investment in us. And no doubt your parents hope for some kind of positive outcome in their investment in your education here. But it is all too human for us to think in strictly economic terms. We always think we have to succeed in human terms. Jesus Christ was no success in the eyes of the world. Even if we do use all our blessings and gifts perfectly, we cannot all always succeed in human terms. There are not enough parts in life’s play for that many stars, not enough corporations to be president of. Many run, but there’s only one head boy, head girl, one President of the United States. Every student in a class cannot get an A+. There is not enough money for everyone to be rich; and as we have learned over and over through time, even if you invest money wisely, it does not always work out here.

Abbot Michael at commencement

The return on the investment that God is looking for is love: our growth in selflessness, our putting our talents to work for others, especially those in need. That makes us ready to experience Him in heaven. So, you see even the human being poorest in talents can be a spectacular success when it comes to that. One’s use of the ability to love necessarily shows itself in the quality of relationships he or she will have with other people and especially with God. Using, strengthening and growing our ability to love builds God’s kingdom here and builds our place in it for eternity. If we do not invest our talents here, we will have no home there.

Fortunately, God is merciful and sees much more than we see. He sees the payoff from many of those little things we do, the small acts of loving kindness that cost us so little, but that can turn around someone else’s day or even life. And he sees the good things that we do without thinking, if we have good hearts. We can often get caught up in guilt, in seeing too much our sins and faults and failures; we may not think enough of the blessings we have and give and with false humility, hide or dismiss our talents. There is another danger, however, that we may take God’s love and mercy for granted and not work at overcoming our sinfulness and weakness.

Genuine humility recognizes our gifts just as much as our imperfections. We forget how much God trusts us, even while he knows full well that we will make mistakes and sin. At the beginning of Mass, we admitted our faults, failures and sins. “Eucharist” – what we are celebrating – means thanksgiving, and that’s what we are really here for. To rejoice, to thank God for the gifts of life and the gift of his love, the gift of his son, and the gift of His Spirit of wisdom and understanding as we begin this school year. We thank God that we know about all this, that he feeds us in this sacrament so we can love as He does, so we can grow in His life and love and be ready to enter His kingdom whenever He calls us, as he did those 3000 people twenty-two years ago this morning. Although the Eucharist, the thanks we give God, never ends, at the conclusion of today’s Eucharist, today’s Mass, we are commissioned, we are sent, out into our world to make our investments with everything God has given us.

The Eucharist, the Mass we celebrate here today is the first we celebrate together this year. And we have no idea what next week, never mind next year will look like. So, we should first be thankful – I know I am – that we can be together here this Fall term. We should be thankful for each other. We are gifts to each other, each one of us. Let’s pray that we are blessed to be still together in November. Thanks be to God, who has given us all some measure of talents, who has given us success and makes us all successes through our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us this year use our talents and success to produce success in others.