大象传媒

Please note:

This script cannot exactly reflect the transmission, as it was prepared before the service was broadcast. It may include editorial notes prepared by the producer, and minor spelling and other errors that were corrected before the radio broadcast.

It may contain gaps to be filled in at the time so that prayers may reflect the needs of the world, and changes may also be made at the last minute for timing reasons, or to reflect current events.

For copyright reasons we are unable to publish the Mass.

CHOIR/ORGAN/FLUTE: Hymn 鈥� Be thou my vision (Slane)

CHOIR/ORGAN: Celebration Gloria (Andrew Wright)

CHOIR/ORGAN: Psalm 127 (O鈥機arroll)

CHOIR/ORGAN/FLUTE: Celtic Alleluia (O鈥機arroll/Walker)

CHOIR/ORGAN: Praise to the Lord (Lobe den herren)

CHOIR/ORGAN: Sanctus from New Celtic Liturgy (Walker)

CHOIR/ORGAN: Memorial Acclamation (Missal tone)

CHOIR/ORGAN/FLUTE: Agnus Dei from Missa Brevis (Art Wangcharoensab)

CHOIR/ORGAN: Tantum Ergo (James Devor)

ORGAN VOLUNTARY: Carillon (Philip Moore)

FR MARTIN - HOMILY:
Saturday night television has shaped our idea of what a human talent looks like. It looks like an ordinary bloke who belts out Nessun Dorma and brings an audience to their feet. It looks like a fifty nine year old woman who can effortlessly swivel and sashay on a Blackpool ballroom dance floor. From Britain鈥檚 Got Talent to Strictly Come Dancing, such displays of talent entertain, inspire and, on occasion, even move us.

Jesus uses the word 鈥渢alent鈥� in Matthew鈥檚 account of what has become known as the parable of the talents. A rich man, travelling abroad, entrusts his wealth to three servants. They receive his estate in the form of talents 鈥� a talent was a financial unit equivalent to some fifteen years worth of wages. In other words, a life changing sum of money.聽

When the rich man returns home, he asks the servants to give a financial account of the talents they have been entrusted with. Two of the servants shrewdly traded their talents and made a financial killing. They are praised for being faithful in small things and promised greater things in the future. They are welcomed into their master鈥檚 happiness. However, the last servant chose to hide the talents given him. His portfolio shows no sign of growth. The Master berates him and orders him to be expelled 鈥渋nto the dark where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.鈥�

鈥�
It鈥檚 clear that Jesus鈥檚 use of 鈥渢alent鈥� and Saturday night TV talents are very different things. But this has not stopped some people from interpreting this parable as a moral call to make use of our human talents or for others to see this parable as an advertisement for adventure capitalism. Neither interpretations are helpful because they place human beings at the heart of the parable and in doing so skew Christ鈥檚 message.

God is the focus of this parable 鈥� the God who reveals himself to us in Jesus Christ. Christ is the Master. The initiative belongs to Him. The action is His alone. He invites us to share in his happiness, to insert ourselves into his divine initiative. He entrusts us with this life-changing talent 鈥� the priceless treasure of knowing that we 鈥渄o not belong to the night or to darkness鈥�no, you are all sons of the light and sons of the day鈥�, as our epistle put it. We belong to Christ, the Son of the living God. We are not made for weeping and the grinding of teeth. We are made for life 鈥� the eternal happiness of sharing in God鈥檚 life. This is our future glory. This is our hope.

A couple of months ago, I was waiting for a bus after a night at the theatre. In a shop front doorway, near where I was standing, lay a homeless man, swaddled in a dirty sleeping bag on a groundsheet of cardboard. I guessed he was in his mid twenties, though too many nights in doorways and on scummy pavements; too many people stepping over him or moving him on, no doubt, had aged him. He had written on cardboard a familiar appeal:

鈥�
Homeless.
I am a human being.
Please help.

And then, there was an added plea. Three words scratched out in biro, that felt liked his deepest longing made public, revealed in all its rawness and fragility before a largely indifferent city.聽 He鈥檇 written

I need hope

He did and we do because hope saves and there is such a thing as an ecology of hope 鈥� an environment where hope flourishes and the contamination of sin that corrodes love can be purified and healed. This environment is called the Church. It is here that we receive from Christ talents given to each 鈥渋n proportion to his ability.鈥� Here, when we use and invest these talents, hope is made real. Not the rose tinted, things can only get better or pious platitude version of hope. But the hope that we looked upon and crucified, the hope that now feeds us with his word and body and blood, the hope that will be our judge. Christ is our hope and in Him alone do we find meaning, no matter how things turn out.

And when all our human talents weaken and fail us

When all the gods and gurus of this world have proven themselves inadequate

When we are weary of the white noise of entertainment and the echo chambers of social media and long, instead, for something more serious

When the ugly, brutal and shape shifting oppress us and we prefer to build our lives on the high lands of beauty, justice and truth

Then we will be given the courage

To get down on our knees

And fall silent

Before that which transcends us and places into the hands of humanity the talent:

The hope of eternal life

The hope that saves.

The hope that we are, indeed, sons and daughters made for the light and the day when Christ will return again.