Faced with today's Gospel we have to take a deep breath and accept it as it stands. It is a message from a loving God to willing servants, telling them that there is no such thing as total loss.

The word "serve" is of critical importance in the passage. Nowadays the word servant is rarely used, at least in the sense of one who is involved in household tasks. Rightly or wrongly, there seems to be a whiff of the demeaning about it.

The word "servant", however, in Jesus' time was truly demeaning. It was virtually equivalent to the word slave. Such a person was totally at the disposal of the "master".

Servants or slaves of God are, indeed, totally at his disposal. It may be, though, that they are willingly and joyfully so. St Peter Claver became in his own words "the slave, of the Ethiopians", Africans captured and sold in the slave markets of South America. He did it for love.

Willing and loving as we may be, we may never have to give all for the Master. If we do have to, though, we know we have not suffered anything like total loss. If willingly and lovingly we truly face the possibility of giving all for the Master we have already died and risen to live freely, joyfully and creatively in his service. It will be irrelevant whether we face the actuality or not.