Reflection
Today is Saturday, August 31st. We see human nature in full display in the Gospel of Matthew. Yes, it is about taking what gifts and talents the Lord gives us and multiplying them for the glory of God and for the Kingdom of Heaven. However, I think this Gospel invites us to go deeper. Rather than focus on the first and second servants in today’s Gospel, I would like to focus on the third servant and the emotions that servant might have been feeling.
The first servant, who receives five talents, enthusiastically goes out and converts those five talents into five more. The one given two talents wisely invests them to generate two more. The servant who received one talent opts to bury that talent in the ground thus returning nothing to the master beyond what he was initially provided with. The Gospel implies that the servant did this “out of fear.”
I wonder what this servant was afraid of. I don’t profess to know exactly what the third servant was thinking, but I see so much of myself in that third servant. Imagine being called in by our Master and watching as the talents are distributed and seeing five given to one servant, two to another, and then having one measly talent placed in our hand. It’s human nature – we begin to compare …. and then we start to despair. In my mind, I can visualize that servant thinking – he has five talents, she has two talents, and I have but one; how can I please my Master? That servant was looking inward and feared taking a risk with the talent provided, lest he have nothing to offer the master when he returned. I imagine the servant asking himself, “How do I compete with my fellow servants who appear to have more talents than I do?”
I can’t help, in reading today’s Gospel, but to think of the young boy in the Gospel of John who, in the face of a larger and hungry crowd, had but two fish and five barley loaves. What he had seemed inadequate in the face of the crowd. Yet a miracle occurred when it was placed before Christ, was blessed by the Father, and distributed by the disciples.
Take a moment and imagine what would be accomplished if you put your talent at the feet of Jesus, ask that it be blessed and, as a disciple of Christ today, you distribute it those around you.