If you pay attention to the music we sing here each week at St. Michael’s, you know there is a deliberate method to what hits your ears—every lyric is chosen as an intentional drumbeat for the Gospel. We opened Mass today singing “House of the Lord,” proclaiming that we have been called straight out of the dark and into His joy. That is not background filler; it is a direct order commanding us to leave passive, half-hearted faith outside those sanctuary doors. That call matters because when you open Matthew’s Gospel today, Jesus makes one thing brutally clear: the Kingdom of God is not a spectator sport.

Look at the third servant. When the Master returns, this man suddenly finds his voice, delivering a pious-sounding speech about how demanding the Master is and how fear drove him to bury his talent in the dirt. He talks a smooth, religious game to justify his cowardice, but you cannot fool Jesus. Christ looks right past the holy vocabulary straight into the ground where that man spent his energy digging a hole to hide. Let’s be honest: there are plenty of people who talk a fantastic game of faith—they know the jargon, they quote Scripture when it’s convenient, and they love the idea of following Jesus right up until it demands their sweat, their wallet, or their comfort. But in the Kingdom of God, you are either in or you are out; there is no lukewarm middle ground, and there is no grandstand for spectators to sit and critique the players on the field.

We are a small, tight-knit parish family, and at a place like St. Michael’s, following Christ requires real, rolling-up-your-sleeves work. We can pray all day long, light every candle in the nave, and chant until we run out of breath, but prayer without concrete action is a dead end. Scripture demands more: the worthy woman in Proverbs 31 wasn’t commended because she sat in a corner with her eyes closed—her hands were busy at the loom, her arms reached out to the poor, and she put love into physical labor. That is why our parish workday mattered; when you showed up with a rake, swung a paintbrush, and broke a sweat to care for our spiritual home, that was prayer in action. When you drop food into the collection bins for our holiday drive, that is faith taking physical form. Following Christ is not an intellectual hobby; it is labor, it is sacrifice, and it means showing up when it costs you something.

Saint Paul warns us today in Thessalonians that the Day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night, and that we are children of the light who cannot afford to sleep. The third servant buried his talent because he allowed fear to distort the goodness of God into an excuse for spiritual laziness. When we stand at the altar today, we don’t bring excuses; we bring our whole lives to Christ. And as we leave, we will sing “Glorious Day,” celebrating the God who called us out of the grave and into the daylight. If Christ called you out of the grave, what in the world are you doing crawling back into the dirt to bury what He gave you? One day, every single one of us will stand face-to-face before the Living God where smooth talk and timid excuses will mean nothing, and the only question that matters will be what you did with what was placed in your hands. Drop the shovel, get off the sidelines, and put your whole heart into building up this Kingdom—so that on your Judgment Day, you will hear the Master say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your Lord.”