A homily for the Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 15, 2026
Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6, Matthew 25:14-30
We all have skills and talents and creativity and insights that are unique to us while being parts of a greater community whole.
Loving gifts from our Creator God, don’tcha know.
Some of these gifts turn us into beacons, into lighthouses, into searchlights, shining forth the divine light within each of us, we children of God.
Some of them are subtler, like the essential workers on the night shift who invisibly and almost magically protect us as we sleep or clean our offices or restock the supermarkets.
Who we are and what we can do reveal themselves as we grow. Athletic skills, musical or artistic talent, a knack for building or fixing things, the ability to mend broken hearts: Usually, we need to grow into those aspects of ourselves through age or experience. And when we do, we make the world better.
When we are and when we act as our fullest selves, the world … just … works.
Yes, it’s a dream, but it’s achievable.
When I was 16, my folks had a friend tow a chalky white 1961 Ford Fairlane into our driveway for me to attempt to restore. The coupe had no redeeming qualities and few working parts, but it gave me a chance to use the flimsy J.C. Whitney mechanic’s tools I’d ordered from the back of Car and Driver magazine while learning what happens under a car’s hood.
Nearly every day after school, I’d fling my bookbag into our front entry hall, holler a hello to Mom, and slide under the car to unbolt this or torque that.
I usually didn’t wait to change my clothes, which — since I was a CBA student — included a jacket and tie. Not compatible with motor oil and grease. Not acceptable to Mom.
Her solution came from the Sears catalog: mechanic’s coveralls. OK, those I could yank over my school clothes far quicker than I could change into something cruddy. Deal.
That jumpsuit and those ratchet wrenches, plus some welcome guidance from friends and neighbors in the automotive industry, helped me refine a latent talent I use to this day.
That jumpsuit and those wrenches were the investments in me that paid dividends like those that the good and faithful servants earned in today’s Gospel passage.
Every one of us is on a life journey.
Every one of us is a work in progress.
Every one of us will make mistakes, backslide, commit a sin.
Every one of us will regress instead of progress. Occasionally, anyway.
We call it being human.
Sigh.
But our individual and unique flaws won’t stop us from fulfilling God’s plan for us if we don’t let them. Plowing ahead is one of those free-will choices we get to make on a daily — hourly — basis. God’s grace gives us the oomph we need when we get stuck.
God’s continual mercy and forgiveness recalculate our life-journey GPS to make sure we’re headed correctly.
Like the guys in the Gospel story, God has entrusted us with talents. Anyone who’s ever bartered a day of leaf-blowing for an oil change knows that our modern concept of talents and skills equals the ancient use of “talent” as a unit of money. Our physical, creative talents, when we apply them, can be more valuable than dead presidents on greenbacks.
Valuable to us. Valuable to others. Valuable to the whole world.
When was the last time any of us inventoried our talents? Checked to see if our tools are rusty or corroded or bent or in need of updating? Investing a little time and mental effort to do so pays huge dividends, because we will have a current sense of how we can contribute to a clean, just, and peaceful world.
After all, that’s why God entrusted us with talents in the first place. Our unique and beautiful talents that benefit ourselves while meshing so wonderfully with everyone else’s.
By the way, after I spent more than a year tinkering with nearly every piston ring and clutch plate and torquing every bolt precisely on the cylinder head, the Fairlane roared to life. I proudly drove almost a full lap around the neighborhood before something — I never learned what — went BANG under the hood and the car rolled to a halt.
I pushed its carcass the rest of the way home, unmounted its license plates, and made my peace, knowing I now had a valuable talent.
