Faithful Risk in Ordinary Life

There are seasons when faith feels like quiet stewardship; showing up, doing the work, trusting slow growth. And there are seasons when faith feels like defiance; refusing to betray what is most sacred under pressure. Today’s readings hold these movements together: the fierce fidelity of a mother and her sons in Maccabees, the steady longing of the Psalmist to see God’s face, and Jesus’ parable of entrusted coins that must not be hidden. Together they ask a single, searching question: What will I do with the life God has entrusted to me; especially when it costs?

The Mother Who Remembers Creation

In 2 Maccabees, a mother watches her sons die rather than break the covenant. Her courage is not a raw stoicism. It is theology prayed into bone. She reminds her youngest that God did not fashion the world out of preexisting stuff; He called it forth from nothing. If God is the Author of being, then fidelity to Him is not an optional lifestyle choice but alignment with reality itself. That is why she can speak of mercy even as death closes in: the One who gave life can restore it.

This is not a remote, ancient heroism. The pressure to compromise dignity and conscience may not appear as a tyrant’s whip, but it shows up in boardrooms, classrooms, and feeds: “Just go along; say what everyone else says; the cost of integrity is too high.” The mother teaches a counter-logic. When first principles are at stake; the holiness of God, the dignity of the human person, the integrity of truth; sacrifice becomes a form of freedom. Hope in the resurrection is not escapism; it is the horizon that allows wise losses in the present. In a world terrified of missing out, Christian hope makes room for redemptive “no’s.”

The Face That Judges and Consoles

The Psalmist prays, “On waking, I shall be content in your presence.” Contentment here is not resignation but arrival. The just face of God is both judgment and consolation. Judgment, because to behold His face is to have our mixed motives clarified; consolation, because in that same light we finally rest. The mother of Maccabees acts as though this future is more real than the king’s threats. The Psalm gives her language: Keep me as the apple of your eye. We are not kept from trial; we are kept within love through trial.

Chosen to Bear Fruit, Not to Hide

Jesus approaches Jerusalem; the place of His own costly fidelity; and tells a parable. A nobleman entrusts coins to his servants and departs. On return, he asks what they have done in the meantime. The point is not financial acumen; it is spiritual courage. The servants who traded took risks for the sake of their master’s interests. The one who hid his coin acted from fear; especially fear of the master’s character. “I knew you were demanding,” he says, as if fear absolves inaction.

The parable exposes a core dynamic of discipleship: what we believe about God determines what we dare to do for God. If we secretly suspect God is harsh, we will bury our lives in a handkerchief of self-protection; no risks, no vulnerability, no inconvenient love. But if we have learned, like the mother, that the Creator is also Redeemer, we will entrust our time, gifts, failures, and opportunities back to Him, expecting that even imperfect efforts can be multiplied.

Jesus’ startling ending about the nobleman’s enemies can disturb modern ears. He is not endorsing violence; He is wielding a familiar royal image to warn that the refusal of God’s kingship is not neutral. To seal oneself against mercy is to choose a trajectory that ends in ruin. The warning is medicinal, not sensational: now is the acceptable time to let God be God.

Between Promise and Return: The “Meanwhile” of Faith

Luke tells us Jesus spoke this parable because some thought the Kingdom would appear immediately. It didn’t then, and it doesn’t now. We live in the “meanwhile”; the stretch between promise and return. What do faithful people do in the meanwhile?

• We invest grace where we are. Conversations, work ethic, creativity, listening, hospitality; these are coins to be traded. The scale is not the point; fidelity is.
• We resist the reflex to bury what is fragile. Talents, charisms, relationships, even wounds become fruitful when offered, not hoarded.
• We examine the image of God that governs our choices. If fear is our operating system, it will look prudent but end sterile. Confidence in the Father begets holy risk.

Modern Forms of Fidelity

For many, “eating pork” today looks like conformity to soft coercions: to treat truth as negotiable, to numb compassion, to curate a self so carefully that the cross can never fit. Fidelity has contemporary shapes:

• Keeping integrity in professions where expedience is rewarded.
• Speaking truth with charity when silence would be safer.
• Honoring the vulnerable; unborn and aged, migrant and marginalized; when they are politically inconvenient.
• Reconciliation that costs pride, not just performative gestures online.
• Sabbath and prayer amid productivity culture, trusting that being with God precedes doing for God.

None of this is flashy. It is the steady trading of coins that, over time, builds a portfolio of love. Jesus promises governance; “take charge of ten cities”; not as domination but as participation in His reign. Authority in the Kingdom is fruit of fidelity, exercised as service.

Fear Transformed by Communion

The servant who hid his coin feared a master he did not trust. Christian fear is different: it is filial awe, infused by love, not terror. How is this change of fear accomplished? Communion. The Eucharist, Scripture, confession, and the quiet labor of daily prayer gradually revise our image of God from taskmaster to Father, from auditor to Bridegroom. Then courage becomes possible. We can risk forgiveness, risk generosity, risk telling the truth, because the result rests finally in the hands of the One who raises the dead.

Toward the Face That Satisfies

“On waking, I shall be content in your presence.” The mother of seven acted for that awakening. The Psalmist longed for it. The parable situates our work within it. The Alleluia verse stitches everything together: “I chose you… to go and bear fruit that will last.” Lasting fruit is born of lives spent, not stored; of consciences formed, not flattened; of hope anchored in the Creator who brings being from nothing and life from death.

So the invitation is both bracing and tender: take out what you’ve been hiding; place it into circulation for the Kingdom; time, gifts, patience, truth-telling, compassion. Refuse the small betrayals that erode the soul. Let the desire to see God’s face order your risks. And when fear speaks, remember the mother’s wisdom: the One who gave breath can give it back. In that confidence, the meanwhile becomes holy ground, and ordinary faithfulness becomes the currency of a world to come.