Click here to read the Sunday readings from the USCCB website.
When I was younger, I remember very vividly one CCD class where our teacher asked us to turn in our bibles to our favorite Bible verse.
Pretty quickly, I turned to this Gospel passage, and I was super proud of myself because I actually found it. It wasn't until many years later I realized that this parable is found in two of the four Gospels, so I had pretty decent odds!
Anyway, this was my favorite Bible passage when I was younger, it really made sense to me: God gives us talents, physically, intellectually, monetarily, and we need to use them to do good, especially for His Kingdom… it just made sense. Use the talents and gifts that God gives us.
But recently several of the daily readings have caught my attention along the same lines, which makes sense, the Church gives us these readings in a continuation for them to go together at some level, but also we change and grow and the scripture speaks to us differently as we get older.
So Friday and Saturday a week ago the Gospel readings were about the dishonest steward who was commended by his Master for making friends by cheating his Master, and then Jesus said make friends with dishonest wealth, finishing by saying one cannot serve God and Money.
I have been thinking about today’s Gospel in light of those other Gospel readings and I see these Talents as dishonest wealth. Now, dishonest wealth doesn’t mean that it was stolen or received through fraud or anything like that, it just means that it really isn’t theirs, and it is fleeting, so at any time it could all disappear.
Think about it, these 3 servants didn’t earn these talents, the Master just gave them to the servants, five, two and one, expected them to use them for an unknown amount of time, and then the Master returned to collect what was his. When he got to the servant who had only one talent but didn’t do anything with it, the Master took it from him.
Some people might be thinking, well what could someone do with just one Talent? Well I looked it up, did the math, and one Talent would have been worth about $27,000. It was 75 pounds of silver, no small thing here okay?
But it doesn’t matter how many talents or gifts were received, the point is that a gift was received and it wasn’t used, what matters is our generosity in putting our gifts to good use.
See, these gifts were given to us for a purpose, moreso just loaned to us for a short time, but we don't know how long that time is, there is no set date. I’d encourage you to think practically about the gifts you have been given: money, possessions, health, abilities, time, etc.
All of these things are considered dishonest wealth because they will not last, in fact they will fail us at some point.
Money and possessions can be stolen or destroyed, I think about the stock market crashing, or a fire burning a house down. Health and abilities, we just never know when an injury or a disease is going to hit us and take those abilities from us.
And none of us knows how much time we have left on this earth. We always say, “time goes so fast,” and it does, but we aren’t even promised tomorrow.
So we have these gifts and talents given to us “by God,” are we using them “for God?” There are two ways we should use them “for God.”
First, we have to consider our own relationship with God. Are we using our gifts to draw into a deeper relationship with God? Such as using money to buy ourselves materials to read and watch, abilities to read the bible and other spiritual works and learn about our faith, time to do those things and especially time to pray.
Prayer is just taking the time to talk to God. In the Gospel for this (yesterday) morning’s 8am Mass, “Jesus told his disciples a parable about the necessity to pray always without becoming weary” (Luke 18:1-8). Any good relationship or friendship needs to have a lot of communication, right? Do we make good use of the gift of time?
It was my birthday earlier this week, I turned 39 for the first time, and I got a card that had an old-timey black and white picture of a man that was probably one of our Founding Fathers, and it said on the front, “Back in my day, we had games, too. We played ‘Gut the Chicken’ and ‘Don’t Let the Fire Go Out.’ My favorite was ‘Find Water.’”
On the inside, it said “Play only fun games today.” So it was pretty funny, but there’s another point in here: we are so blessed to live in a first world country where we typically don’t have concerns about where our next meal will come from, if we will have heat in the house, or if we can find water.
Maybe we would pray more if we did have those concerns, but with this free time, all this technology that is supposed to help “save us time,” are we using it to grow closer to God? That’s the first priority.
The second priority is to use our gifts to bring others to God. This is where the rubber hits the road, see, as disciples, we grow in relationship with God, and then we tell others about our relationship to bring them to God, or we support those who are doing that work.
Giving money to the Church or to charities who are doing that is a great use of our gifts that way. Buying books or bibles for ourselves or for others is a great use of our possessions. Using our health or abilities or time to make friends and talk about our relationship with God is another great way.
A practical example for myself: my favorite sport to play at this time in my life is volleyball. When I lived in Des Moines, I’d play 2 or 3 nights a week, as a Priest I am happy with one night, actually right now I’d be happy with any!
Now with volleyball, it is never just about the volleyball, it is also about the social, we always go out and get something to eat and drink afterwards. And quite often, the conversation turns to faith, allowing me to witness to my faith and hopefully draw others deeper into theirs.
To me, this is a great use of my God given athletic ability, this dishonest wealth, I mean, I could blow my knee out after Mass and be done playing volleyball, it is just one avenue that I have been given to work in God’s Kingdom, to bring others into His Kingdom as well.
St. Josemaría Escrivá, in a commentary on this scripture, talking about the man with one talent, said, “He has opted irresponsibly for the easy way out. He will simply give back what he has received. How sad not to obtain a real profit from the few or many talents that God has given to each man so that he may dedicate himself to the task of serving other souls and the whole of society!”
St. Josemaría Escrivá says it is irresponsible which it might be, but I often wonder if we aren’t just scared, we have grown comfortable and we don’t want to take a chance. Here’s the thing, God gives us everything we need.
He loves us and blesses us abundantly. If we are working with Him, truly for Him, He will see to it that we will be further blessed. Take great confidence in that and strive to use your dishonest wealth, your talents, strive to use them well for the Kingdom. Each act of our life becomes a moment to love, to love God and to love our neighbors.