Given to be Used not to be Buried (Sunday, Week 33, Year A)

The Parable of the Talents (cf. Matt. 25:14-30) will be better understood by those in business. The Parable tells a story of a wealthy man who had three people (workmen) working or doing business for him. One workman had great ability. The second had average ability. The third had little ability. One day the wealthy man decided to make a journey. Before he left, he gave each workman a sum of money according to his ability. The first received 5000 Cedis, the second 2000 Cedis and the third 1000 Cedis. The three workmen were to use the money to work or trade and make a profit for the wealthy man during his absence. The workmen must have taken into account that at the end of the day they must render an account of what they did with the money once the owner comes back. The parable ends with a sad narrative of one workman being thrown into an outer darkness to be punished severely for not being productive with the money given to him.  

During these last days of the Church’s year, amongst other things this parable should remind us that there will be an end (a day of reckoning, a day for settling accounts, a day for stocktaking and assessment) – some people call it the “end-time”. As for “When it will be” or “when it will happen”, we do not know. In the second reading (cf. 1 Thess. 5:1-6), St Paul tells the Thessalonians that “that day” will come like a thief in the night. We should not be worried about that day. If at all we must worry, let us worry about our fate on that day. And our fate will be determined by what we are currently doing with the talents and gifts given to us and how we are responding to the tasks/duties entrusted to us. 

Just like the workmen, we have been given some money in the form of gifts, talents and responsibilities according to our capacity or ability: we have received some responsibility in our capacity as administrators, teachers, some civil servants, singers, speakers, dancers, hawkers, owners of businesses, pastors of souls, and so on. The problem sometimes is that those of us who have two talents hide it away possibly because we are lost in admiration of those with more talents, waiting to be like them before we could use the “two” talents that we have. And those of us with one talent are comfortably burying those talents and continue to envy those with two or five talents, blatantly refusing to work with the one talent that we have received. Some of us are waiting until we become directors in a company before we can acknowledge and accept that God has also given us some peculiar gift or responsibility according to our capacity. The gospel clearly remarks that “each received some talent according to his ability”. Let us not bury those talents given to us! They are not ours so to say; they are for the common good. They are meant to be used no matter how small or insignificant they may appear to us. 

Gifts are for the common good, not for self-enrichment or personal aggrandizement. In Ephesians 4:12, St Paul teaches that gifts are given “for the equipment of the saints for the work of ministry and for the building up of the body of Christ”. Gifts are meant to be invested for the good of others, not to be hidden away. The first reading from the Book of Proverbs (31:10-13.19-20.30-31) gives us a description of a good or virtuous wife. What makes her “good or virtuous” is her resourcefulness, her ingenuity and willingness to work: “She seeks wool and flax, and works with willing hands. She opens her hand to the poor; and reaches out her hands to the needy. Her works will praise her in the gates”. She put the gifts or talents she received to good use.

On the day of reckoning and stocktaking, our resourcefulness and productivity will certainly be factored into the assessment process. The man with one talent lost that talent, was punished severely and thrown into the outer darkness not because he squandered the talent (or money) but because he did not use it. If we don’t risk using our gifts, we will risk losing it. Nature teaches us that whatever we don’t use, we lose. If our muscles are not used, they will atrophy or waste away. If the brain is not used and exercised, it will decay. Let it not be that we did not enter into the eternal joy of the Father just because we did not use that single talent He gave to us for the good of others. All of us have received gifts or talents. No exception! Discover yours, develop and use it to the greater glory of God and for the good of others.