Does the parable in today’s gospel make you feel uneasy? Did it make you think about all you have been given and what use you have made of it? Did it make you wonder why some people have so much and others have so little?
If you did react in any of those ways, it is completely natural. That is why Jesus spoke in parables so frequently. He wanted to shake us out of our complacency. He wanted to challenge the way we look at ourselves, at the world and at God. He wanted to prod us into seeing reality the way that our Heavenly Father does so that we will change our lives accordingly. By their nature, parables are meant to leave us with more questions than answers.
The main point of today’s parable seems clear - we will be judged according to our use of the talents God has given us. But if we reflect closely on Jesus’ words there are some even deeper insights we can gain into the spiritual life and our relationship with God.
The first point is how generous God is.
In the parable, the king gives his servants five, two and one talents. In Jesus’ day, a talent was the largest denomination of money. It was reserved mostly for government transactions. Therefore, the king was not entrusting his servants with token amounts of money, but what would have been vast sums that could have potentially bankrupted him. The king himself was taking a risk in entrusting these talents to his servants.
In the same way that the king was generous in entrusting talents to his servants so our Heavenly Father is generous with His gifts to us. Before we ever can give an account of what we have done with His gifts, we first have to make an inventory of just how much He has given us. It all starts with the gift of life. None of us asked to be born. Our life and everything that goes along with it are a pure gift of God’s generous love.
We were then blessed to be born into a family of people who cared for us and nurtured us when we were at our most vulnerable. None of our families were perfect, but we would not be here if they did not care for us to the best of their abilities. It was in our families that we learned what true love was and how to nurture relationships with others. By having families of our own, many of us have passed that gift of life and love on to others, sharing in God’s creative love.
For most of us, the gift of faith would have been given to us through the witness of our families. They were the ones who had us baptized, who insisted that we attend Mass and live the values of the gospel until we were mature enough to see the truth and value of it for ourselves. That faith has been with us carrying us through the hard times and making our joy complete in good times.
Then we have our individual abilities and gifts. We have skills, material wealth and prosperity, health, strength, vigor, charisma and other character traits that come naturally to us as part of our personality. Even physical beauty is a gift of God. All these traits can be put to use to build up God’s Kingdom. Along with life, family and faith they are entrusted to us so that we can do our Heavenly Father’s will.
When we consider all that God has given us, it will be natural for us to feel grateful. However, through the parable, Jesus wants us to take it one step further. He wants us to consider how we can put all those gifts to the service of God’s Kingdom. How can we make the world a better place, a place of welcome for the poor and vulnerable, a place of justice for the oppressed, a place of love for the rejected? He wants to challenge us to see our unique skills and abilities not as ways to build up our self-esteem but as means to build up His Church.
The second point of the parable is not only that God is generous but that His gifts to us are multiplied when we put them to use.
In the parable, the good servants were able to double their investments. Not only that, but the servant with the ten talents was given the talent of the lazy servant. In the same way, when we take the risk of sharing what we have with others, our total is not diminished but increased. In God’s calculus, the more we give, the more we have.
The best example of this is love. When I take the risk of loving another person I do not end up with less love to give away. Rather I experience the joy that comes with sharing my heart with another person and so I have the courage to take the risk again and again. As light grows stronger when it is passed from one candle to another, so the gift of love multiplies as we give it away.
The same is true of all God’s gifts, even material ones like food and money. Like the wicked servant in the parable, we may want to hold back out of fear. We may want to keep what we have buried so that we will not lose it. But in doing so we are only cheating ourselves of the other blessings God wants to shower on us.
God has blessed each one of us generously. Take some time this week to make an inventory of every blessing in your life. Ask God how He expects you to put them to use for His Kingdom. If we can respond generously and courageously to His will, we will find even more blessings flowing from His hand. Then, at our Master’s return, we can feel confident that we will enter into His joy.
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