27th Sunday in Ordinary Time ( C-cycle )
October 7, 2007

Recently, I have taken to reading about the lives of the saints and it has been an enriching exercise for me.  One of the saints that I have read about is St. Frances de Sales.  And as I was reflecting on today’s gospel reading while preparing for my homily, an incidence in his life that I had read about came to mind.  When he was 19 years old, St. Francis de Sales fell seriously ill.  This was in the year 1587 and at that time, medical students used cadavers to practice and these were generally stolen from graves.  As he lay on his bed, thinking that he was dying, Francis called his favorite teacher and said: “Sir, arrange my funeral as you see fit.  I ask only that after my funeral, you give my body to the medical students.”  “But,” protested the teacher, “that would be a disgrace to your family”.  But young Francis insisted “It is very consoling to me as I lie dying, to think that if I have been a useless servant during my life, I will at least be of some good after my death.”

What struck me about this was the profound humility of St. Francis.  Here was a learned and holy young man who felt that he had accomplished nothing.  And the saints are all like that.  They called themselves in the words of today’s gospel “Unworthy Servants".  It is also not by accident that these are the very same words a Bishop uses to denote himself during the prayer after consecration at a Mass; “We pray for our Holy Father, for all the faithful, and for me your unworthy servant.”

Now, what about you and me; How do we fit in today’s Gospel?  Like the saints, we are all servants of God.  And therefore have a duty to God.  But there is duty and then there is love.  Mostly, when we do what we are told, we do so out of obedience.  But if we really love God as the saints did, we will go beyond duty, and will make heroic efforts to do what pleases God.  That is essentially the message of the gospel today.

Recall that Jesus told the gospel story in response to the request by the disciples to increase their faith. Therefore the parable is also really a warning to them and also to us against supposing that faith, and the obedient service of the Lord in which faith is expressed, establishes a claim for reward.  For faith is a gift of God and is sufficient in itself for our salvation as the great apostle Paul once reminded us “justification is by Faith, lest anyone should boast.".  This is an important lesson for us.  For today we are surrounded by many who do only what they have to do, believing that to be sufficient.

What we are called to do as Christians is to try to do more than we are asked, to go beyond the call of duty.  We are called to strive to please God.  And the way that we can please God is to abide by His natural laws as prescribed in the gospel of life.  And there is no better time to start than this Sunday. For as we all know, this is Respect Life Sunday.  And of late, the gospel of life has been under attack in particular on four fronts.  First of all there is abortion.  Abortion is the intentional and direct killing of an innocent human being and is therefore a form of homicide.  In all cases of abortion, the child is always the innocent party and no law may permit the taking of his or her life.  In every circumstance, the child is STILL a UNIQUE person.  There is no excuse to kill the child even if the child’s conception is due to the sins of another person.

The second form of attack is the issue of Euthanasia, or mercy killing. “Mercy Killing”: - there is an oxymoron if ever there is one. No one has a right to take his or her own life let alone that of another person.  In euthanasia, the ill or elderly are killed out of a misplaced sense of compassion, but true compassion cannot include doing something intrinsically evil to another person.

The third life issue is fetal stem research.  The key word here is fetal.  This is different from adult stem cell research, which does not involve killing the donor.  In the case of fetal stem research, an embryo is killed; - An attack on life.

Finally, there is the issue of Gay marriage.  This is a respect of life issue in that the family life is being attacked by the concept that the government should legalize unnatural unions.  St. Paul in the second reading today, enjoins us to stir up the gift of faith we received from God. And God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and love and of self control.  Today, therefore the gospel calls us not to sit idly by while the forces of darkness, the spirit of death uses ingenuity to run triumphant in our society.  The gospel is calling us to rise up and resist the imposition of unnatural laws on us.  For believe me, if we showed stiff resistance to this imposition, they could not happen. For evil only triumphs when good people keep silent.

It was Archimedes, the great scientist who said “Give me a lever long enough and a place to put it on and I will move the world.  There is such a lever and it is called “Faith”.  There is a place to put it on, and it is called “God".  And there is a power that can swing that lever and that is you and I.  We can stop the culture of death if we put our mind to it and there is no better time to start than now.

God Bless you.