Taking risks is part and parcel of life. Taking on an employee; choosing a partner in marriage; making a career choice – however clearly we’ve discerned, however much we’re sure it’s right, there’s always an element of risk. One virtue which will come into play is prudence, another is courage, and between the two we discern our way through life.

These same twin virtues are needed in living out our faith so that the Christian voice may be heard in society: standing up for the rights those who are on the margins, for the dignity of human life from its very beginning to its very end, for compassion for all people and proper stewardship of our common home. And at the same time that we do this, each of us has to register that, along with every human being, we are sinners in a Church that is always in the process of much-needed purification.
Jesus today in this Gospel is challenging us to be courageous, to open our hearts wider. We are to risk ‘investing’ our talent, nurturing the treasure entrusted to us and using it for God’s greater glory. In this strange world at this strange time when there is so much fear and uncertainty, we’re being challenged to dig deep into our faith in a God who has a plan for our lives and who loves us so much that he entrusts a treasure to us to use and use well.

The God we know deep down does not abandon us but blesses us with gifts, gifts to use, each one of us. The demands of the Gospel are extreme; they are radical. They require us to put into practice Our Lord’s preferential option for the weakest in society – the poor, those who are excluded or disadvantaged because of their background, those who perceive they are treated unfairly on account of what they believe. To be on the side of the Gospel is indeed to risk failure, embarrassment, despair, frustration, even losing our faith ourselves.

It’s sometimes not at all easy to use our talent, to take that treasure we cherish so much and trade it in the market-place of our world. It’s too much of a risky business. So we say: ‘Lord, I knew you were an exacting Master. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself and your kingdom. I knew it wouldn’t work. It was far too much of a risk putting myself out but, Lord, I held onto the treasure, I held firm to my faith as a Christian and a good Catholic and now after all this time I give the treasure back to you.’

How often do we take a risk with what really is most dear to us, what we celebrate here: our Catholic Christian faith? If we’re honest we all need to recommit ourselves again and again to taking the big risk of getting involved in using our talents to seek God’s kingdom. Because, whenever we get close to doing the will of God, the Evil One will surely get in the way. He will encourage us to surrender our God-given faith, to drift away gradually, to believe that the Christian faith and or the Catholic Church is so unnecessary in today’s society…

Here we gather as the community of faith, the Body of Christ. But that Body needs constantly to be brought back from the embers of faith to the light of Christ that will shine again in our hearts during Advent and at Christmas. The world around us is a world searching for light, for meaning, for community. We also search: search to serve others, especially the weakest; search to appreciate the talents we have been given freely and freely take them out from this place so they may multiply and build the kingdom in our society.

For all the wiles of the Evil One, who will try to stop us, we encounter a human yearning for something purer, more just and more true. We find in ourselves and in others a deep yearning for God, a deep yearning to encounter him in the here and now, to see his human face as he charges us to bring that human face of God, Jesus Christ, to our world.

St John Chrysostom has a wonderful way of expressing the challenge: ‘It is [simply] not possible for the light of the Christian to be hid … Do not insult God.’ What a treasure we have in our Church’s worship and life at this time, in the people gathered here from all over to share in this journey from death to life, from darkness to light. The treasure is not meant simply to be stored and then returned. Let the dead bury their treasure and die with it! But as for ourselves, how are we going to share the treasure we find here with our sisters and brothers this week? Dare we even risk it?