Let Christ Know You

The following is a Gospel reflection for the thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time.

I was recently on instagram and saw these really awesome photos of Catholic chaplains saying mass during WW2 for the soldiers. There are a few books on the topic, and one of them is called “Soldiers of a Different Cloth: Notre Dame Chaplains in World War II.” It is currently on my reading list, hoping to start it before Christmas comes, but I did some research before going in to buy it and the story of these chaplains is just insane. An article in the Arlington Catholic Herald talks about the book and they write “They [the Catholic Chaplains] marched alongside the troops in the Bataan Death March, parachuted with the 101st Airborne into Normandy on D-Day, and endured Belgium’s freezing cold in the Battle of the Bulge. Those captured alongside the young men they served were also imprisoned in hellish conditions in Germany and Japan.” But they didn’t just do all that. They didn’t just fight in the war. They also prayed over the mounds of dead, they heard confessions and said mass in the small breaks in battle, and ran in front of gun fire to bless the dead that had just died. One such chaplain, Fr. Barry followed his soldiers into battle and as the chaplain, “he carried only his khaki uniform, his stole, and his prayer book.” He dodged bullets to give last confessions to Catholics and prayers to non-Catholics, as Arlington Catholic Herald explains. These chaplains were amazing, honorable, and valor filled men. And they still are, as there many priests, although a shortage, serving as Chaplains. They are entrusted by the Catholics in their unit to bring the faith throughout the difficult moments, and be there for the absolute worst times. Trust is key here. The chaplains have their trust, their faith in God that he will guide their ministry, protect them in battle, and help them to perform the sacraments amongst despair and battle. But then there is also an element of trust between the soldiers and the chaplain. The Catholics of the unit are trusting that the chaplain will be there with them, that the chaplain will be at their side, armed with the power of God, their stole, and their prayers.

Isn’t that what our Lord is talking about in this parable. Jesus gives us this story about Talents, essentially currency. This man gives her servants talents and two of them take what he gave them and do good with them, essentially they gave him a return on investment. One of them is given 5 talents and returns 10, the other is given 2 and returns 4. They give back to this man on the journey what he is owed and more. There are two points of trust here. The first is that the man going on a journey trusts in his servants to take his money and to do good with it, such as by doubling what he gave them. The second element of trust is that the servants trust in the man that they will be rewarded for their good work in doubling it. Both elements of trust are crucial to the relationship and crucial to their success in pleasing the master. But one of the servants didn’t do this. The other servant explained that the master was demanding, so he buried it. He had fear. He didn’t trust the master, and what does he get? He violated the trust of the master, and therefore is given no reward.

So what is Jesus trying to tell us here? Trust in God is key, above all else. No matter your situation, no matter the issues or persecutions you may face, trusting God is the only way to truly live a meaningful life, and by not doing that, you would be leading yourself into failure, into a life with no reward. Faith is demanding, and it should be, since its goal is to worship the God of the universe, the God who literally created the entire world. But we know, despite the sometimes demanding nature of faith, that God is love, and that never should we ever have fear in him, because it is this fear that leads to a lack of trust in him, and it is this lack of trust which leads to failure, to separation from God, which ultimately is hell.

I’m sure everyone remembers when they were a kid, the age when they finally got to come home from school by themselves, to an empty house. It was like that first major step of freedom in life, and every kid loves it. I remember throughout middle school and high school when I was home alone my mom would often tell me “Make sure to do this before I get home this afternoon.” I remember I would often let things pile up in the corner of my bedroom and my mom told me “make sure to put all that away before I get home.” It had been there for like a month, but of course I acted like she asked me to clean the whole house. But, as you may have expected, 7:00 PM rolled around eventually and I didn’t do it. Sometimes it was out of honest ignorance, as some things slip our minds as human beings, but other times out of pure laziness. But, either way, my mom put her trust in me. She put her trust in me. And I failed. I was given direction and I failed. I was given a task, something to do, and I failed to follow through. My mother, who did so much for me, gave me a task and I couldn’t complete it.

Although not a perfect analogy, isn’t this the problem that is presented in the parable: Our Lord Jesus gives us a way to live, he gives us commandments to follow and guide our lives by. But we often choose to ignore them. Jesus tells us to repent of our sins and ask him for forgiveness, so he gives us confession, yet we find ourselves not going. Jesus tells us what we should do and shouldn’t do. He wants us, just like my mother did, to listen to what he asks, because even though we sometimes don’t understand it, it is for our own good. Above all, Jesus says we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, and being, essentially, we must trust in the Lord above all else. And it is when we don’t trust in God that things fall apart, like if the chaplains stopped trusting in God, and the soldiers stopped trusting in them. The whole system would fall apart.

As we come to the end of our liturgical year, our Lord, Jesus Christ, gives us information on what the Church calls the Last Four Things. That is Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. And it isn’t always a pretty picture. Last week we heard our Lord explain to us what we need to be ready. We need our Lord to be our vision, as I discussed last week, so that we can live a life in which we are worthy to return to him. The Lord tells us “Amen, I say to you, I do not know you. Therefore, stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” Now this week we get a similar, but different message. The Lord elaborates more this week on what it means to be ready for when the unexpected coming our Lord is, essentially when we come before the Lord, which is death, judgment, heaven, and hell. And essentially Jesus tells us that to be ready, to be prepared for his coming, is to trust in God above all else, to put God first and trust in his mercy. So we are to take the faith and grace we have been given, accept it and multiply it. How do we do this? By being, as St. John Paul II says, an Easter people. We need to make known the Resurrection of Jesus Christ to the world. We need to bring our faith to the world through our actions, through our temperance, and through our love. We need to show the world that we trust the father above all else, and by doing so, we definitely multiply what the Lord has given us. But if we keep our faith to ourselves, pick and choose what we want to believe, and keep the truth of reality as a subjective belief, then we bury what the Lord has given us, and He will not know us. If we trust in God above all else, and show it to the world, just like the Chaplains did, Jesus will confess to the father that he knows us. Jesus tells us in Matthew 10:32, “Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.” We need to live our lives like the chaplains, and not like childhood me, and hopefully that was obvious. The chaplains showed the world by their absolute value and bravery they trusted in the Lord above all else, they trusted he would take care of them, and so they did his work on earth, giving example to the other soldiers in their units.

We have and will continue many battles in our lives where we have to choose between trusting in God and trusting in empty promises and false guarantees. Even Jesus had the choice. Jesus feared the suffering and had agony over it, but he trusted in the Father, he trusted in himself, and he knew, as God, that he would have to do this to save what he loves most. The chaplains had a literal battle and they still chose to trust in God, as they dodged bullets to bring the sacraments.

Christ only knows us if we allow others to know him. Let Christ Know You.