Homilies

The request from the apostles is disarmingly simple: “Increase our faith.” Yet the response they receive is startling—vivid images and a story with a demanding master. At first hearing, the tone feels harsh. That is on purpose. Jesus leans on exaggeration to uncover an essential truth: the Christian life is not a part-time hobby. It is non-stop. It is all-consuming. It touches everything we do because it is about everything being made new in Christ.

This parable sketches two worlds divided by a gate: a banquet inside, a wounded neighbor outside. Step by step, a life is constructed around that gate—habits, choices, comforts, and blind spots harden into architecture. When death comes, the architecture holds. As Abraham says, “a great chasm is established.” The tragedy is not only punishment; it is permanence. A man who would not cross toward communion discovers he can no longer cross at all.

Imagine being told the audit is coming and you have already blown through the budget and squandered the resources. Your stomach drops. You start thinking, not about excuses, but about how to repair what has been damaged. That is the hard reckoning that forces the manager in the parable to act—and it names us. We have all wasted what the Lord placed in our hands: hours scrolled away, skills left idle, chances to love postponed for “later.” Yet the turning point is not in shame. It is in action.