Talents from God and for God.

The missionary narrates: “We organized spiritual exercises. We also needed funds to carry out, which the participants had to pay for themselves. When they learned the amount, one girl was left sad. Where to get the money from? Should I ask for it from my parents? Impossible! Father doesn’t go to church, and mother doesn’t care about such things. She sees only the hairdresser, the jewels, and the household how she looked forward to being able to spend in silence with Christ, whom she had secretly visited in church! Knowing that several children were in a similar situation, we asked them to write to see who could contribute how much to help their classmates. There were both pleasant and less pleasant answers on the slips. But one made me very happy. I got only one euro and nothing more. I worked to earn it. Please take me with you!” That one euro earned another euro.

We have just heard one of the most important parables. It is possible that once you saw after the first few sentences that the parable of the talents was being read, you stopped perceiving any further. After all, you already know it. And so you began to wander in your thoughts. You thought about where to go for entertainment today, what’s on TV today, whether the dessert will turn out according to the new recipe, who’s next to me, and what my home is doing…

And it is this parable that we should meditate on more often. It can very quickly happen that we live our lives contentedly believing what good Christians we are, only to be shown otherwise at God’s judgment! God’s standards and ours are not the same. We judge ourselves in a different light than God will judge us. It is from the gospel that we learn what the difference is. We get in the habit of comparing ourselves, judging ourselves with others, and not judging ourselves by what God has put in us. He expects more from the one who has been given five talents than from the one who has been given only two or one. He hopes to give back at least something from the one who has received one.

Brothers and sisters, this is where Christ paused and looked at His hearers. For many, that was enough. He meant to say: Woe to you, brother, sister, who have received even this one talent and have destroyed even that one! Are you satisfied with yourself? Are you living in an orderly family? Your colleague is getting divorced for the second time – and you are still exalting yourself! Immediately, you think you are better and feel that your contentment is in place. But it is quite possible that if you knew his life’s journey, if you knew all that he has experienced in life if it could be expressed in some measure what he has received from God and what you have received, and now add to that your faults and his faults, perhaps it would work out to your disadvantage! You probably had better parents than he did; you didn’t have as bad friends as he did. In a word, you got more graces than he did. His scandals are public knowledge, so he’s more humble. He realizes his sinfulness, which makes him more disposed to make some great turn in life. Maybe at the last minute. And maybe so honestly that it balances out everything negative in his life. While you, in the consciousness of your moral high ground, become uncritical and perhaps do not even notice how selfishness, malice, and pride grow within you, clouding your vision, deceiving you, or turning your gaze on your glittering exterior and hiding your stinking interior.

It is hard to look at myself through God’s eyes and recognize what God expects of me. It wouldn’t even be possible without God’s grace. The servant in the parable saw what talents he had been given. But ours are so unspecific. Man is prone to misjudge himself. He overestimates something, underestimates something. Someone feels shortchanged if he feels less physical strength, and he, in turn, judges the one who does not have such good insight. And from such a one-sided evaluation of one’s abilities, one does not use and buries the talents one has been given. He will tell himself: If I had as much money as that guy, how many people would I have gifted with it? But I don’t. And with this statement ends his inquiry of conscience about the love of neighbor. And it does not occur to him at all that he has skillful and healthy hands, that he can lend a helping hand in building, that he has good feet and can go to that friend with whom he is angry that he has the gift of expression and wastes it in useless and going nowhere debates, that he has a fine figure, not to draw near to Christ and say that even the young man needs Christ. Still, on the contrary, he goes and turns his back on Christ till the time when his forehead is covered with wrinkles, and his hair is white.

One man narrates, Last year I was at the spa. My roommate and I took communion daily. A friend just happened to invite me to church. I got my soul in order, a peaceful mind, and my physical health returned.

We can say that this spa friend used his talent, and the brother-patient above dug up his talent, leaving behind his fear of the strict administrator.

Father, mother, you too, my dear friend, it is the end of the holiday season. The school gates have opened. Adults are returning to their duties. Wouldn’t it be good to return to Christ if I neglected Him over the holidays to find Him again? Let us magnify our talents!