Over the last couple of weeks now in our Gospels, we have heard parables from Jesus that have focused on being prepared for the end times, stories that are meant to remind us of the importance of being prepared for when the Lord comes again. Last week, we heard the parable of the wise virgins and the foolish ones, the latter of which found themselves unprepared with sufficient oil for their lamps when the Bridegroom returned. This week, we hear the parable of the talents and we kind of get a similar message. Those who are left unprepared are simply out of luck. And the temptation with these parables is to think that God is some harsh judge, that He isn’t loving and merciful, that He doesn’t care about His children. But that really doesn’t sound like it should be the message, does it? So, let’s dive a little bit deeper.

As I mentioned in my homily last week, during these final weeks of the liturgical year – which will come to an end next week on the Feast of Christ the King – the Church, through the readings at Mass, calls us to reflect on how we are living our lives, how well we are being disciples of the Lord, and if we are truly following His commands and doing our best to ensure that we are in right relationship with Him. Ultimately, the Church uses this time to invite us to reflect on our primary Christian vocation: holiness.

Part of holiness is that we know who we are, that we know who God created us to be. The truth is that every single one of us in Church today was willed by God, we were thought of by Him, fashioned by Him. He created each of us not because He had to, but because He wanted us to be. And because of that, He gave each of us a particular mission to accomplish, a purpose for our existence. In order to achieve that mission, God gave us certain gifts and talents. He bestowed upon each of us something unique, something exceptional that will help us to leave our mark on the world, to be used for the glory of God and the furthering of His kingdom. We just have the task of finding out what that gift, what that talent might be. We have to take the journey within to find it, to ask ourselves the question: “what might that thing be that God has given me?” It is our responsibility to look inward to discover, to recognize, to put into practice that gift, to nourish it and strengthen it, so that we can bring it to the world.

The parable of the talents that we hear Jesus telling today is meant to challenge us to think about how we are responding to the gifts that God has given us. Do we know what those things are? Are we open to using those gifts? Are we using them in the way that God has intended them to be used? Are we bearing good fruit with what God, in His goodness, has given to us?

The parable shows us that God doesn’t give to us equally. Instead, He gives us gifts and talents that are equivalent to our abilities. The first two servants received much more than the third because the Master knew exactly what they were capable of producing. At first glance, that may not seem fair to us, especially when we live in a culture that demands equality, a culture where everyone gets a trophy. But that’s not necessarily how God works. Yes, He loves us all equally and yet uniquely; He created us to be given an equal amount of respect and dignity. But those are different topics than what is being discussed in this parable. In this, the Lord is focusing on how God the Father has done something unique in us and how we are called to respond to that generosity. The first two servants received more than the third because the Master knew they were trustworthy. He knew what talents they had, their abilities to make the gifts he was giving fruitful. He knew that they would give it their all. The servants, on the other hand, also knew the Master, they knew what he was asking of them and they responded to that by dedicating their time and energy to achieving that demand. They used the gifts they had been given to be fruitful, to multiply the gift of the Master and it paid off in the end.

The point is, whatever we have been given by God is enough…it doesn’t matter how small or insignificant it might seem to us. We shouldn’t be focused on how much we have received; instead, we should be focused on how we can make the things we have been given fruitful. We all have a choice to make. We are free either to use the gifts God has given us as He would have us use them, or we could squander them. We can choose to be like the first two servants who made a return on what the Master had given them, or we could be like the third servant, a person who buries the gift in the holes of self-indulgence, fear, laziness, greed.

Our response to that comes down to how we understand who God is. We can fall into the same deception that the Evil One has used since the beginning of our human story, the deception he used in the Garden of Eden, telling us that God is a harsh and unjust master, which gives us an easy excuse for giving into fear and laziness. Or we can look at the truth of who God is, remembering what Scripture tells us, recalling the example that God gave us in His Son, Jesus. In Him, we see who God truly is. He isn’t some harsh and unjust master; instead, He is a good, generous, and powerful King; He is a loving Father who desires nothing less than simply being with us and having us dwell with Him for eternity.

It is our mission in life to cooperate with God in that endeavor, to do what we can to ensure that we are on the right path, responding to the invitation from the Lord to be His children, to be disciples of Jesus and following His example. It is our purpose to take the gifts, the talents, the abilities that He has given us to put them to good use, to shape the world around us as Christ would have us do, to bring others into an encounter with the heart of Jesus, with the heart of the Father.

We hear these parables, we are given these instructions by Jesus not to scare us into submission, but to share with us that there are consequences for how we choose to live. There are consequences for when we fail to respond to God with love and dedication. The Lord tells us these stories because of His goodness and His love for us. He wants us to know life’s true purpose and end. He wants us to experience the greatest reward we could ever imagine. He wants us to live well now so that we can be with Him forever in Heaven. That’s the kind of God we believe in – a God who wants to save us and give us joy. We simply have to trust Him enough to follow where He leads.   

Image: The Parable of the Talents, Willem de Poorter, circa 17th century. In the National Gallery of Prague. Used under Public Domain license. Wikimedia Commons.