27th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) - 5 October 2025
5th October 2025
“To be perfect in our vocation is nothing else than to fulfil the duties which our state of life obliges us to perform, and to accomplish them well, and only for the honour and love of God.” - St Francis de Sales
A reflection on today's Gospel reading by the Venerable Archbishop Fulton J Sheen:
Our service is an arduous one. It involves labour in the fields in the daytime and serving at night. There is no such thing as saying at the end of a day, “Well, I’ve done my duty for today.” Rather, our Lord said we have to call ourselves unprofitable servants. The less there is of self-satisfaction in our lives, the more zeal there is in His service. If we count the converts we have made, we’re very likely to begin by thinking we made them instead of our Lord, Himself. We cannot say, “I built three rectories, now the Bishop ought make me a Monsignor.” He still has to keep in mind that he is an unprofitable servant. Labour union rules are not sufficient for us, we belong to a different union where love, not ours, is the standard.
When we think of all our Lord has done for us we really can never do enough. The word “enough” does not exist in love’s vocabulary. It’s very much like telling a mother who has spent all night alongside the bed of her sick child that she has done enough. We know we are called the ambassadors of Christ, but we are also the victims of Christ. We know very well our blessed Lord refused to distinguish between work and extra work, between being on duty and standing by, between walking one mile and another mile, between giving our coat and giving our cloak. No errors of self-complacency are divinely permitted; no self pity, no pluming ourselves on our administrative talent; we are worthless servants when we have done our best. To our dear Lord alone belong the merit and the glory of our services. To us belong nothing but the gratitude and the humility of being pardoned rebels. To sum it all up, we are the ambassadors of Christ, and we are the channels of His power.
(Life is Worth Living)
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