Making the Most of the Gifts We Have Been Given
By Fr. Conor Donnelly
(Proofread)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.
We’re told in St. Matthew, “For it is like a man going abroad who called his servants and handed over his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one. To each according to his particular ability. And then he went on his journey” (Matt. 25:14–15).
Fulton Sheen comments that the ground of divine reward is in the service rendered, not in the work itself. Thus they who produce great results will not be honored more than those who produce less striking results. The poor, simple, uneducated people with one talent who are equally faithful with smaller gifts will receive the same reward.
He also says it is not ownership of talents that determines the judgment, but rather the enrichment of any talent that one possesses. Because one who cannot do much is not excused from doing little.
And Mother Teresa says at the end of our life, we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, or how many great things we have done. We will be judged by, “I was hungry and you gave me to eat. I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless and you took me in” (Matt. 25:35).
Hungry, she said, not only for bread, but for love. Naked, not only for clothing, but naked of human dignity and respect. Homeless, not for want of a room, of bricks, but homeless because of rejection. This is Christ in distressing disguise.
And Chesterton says, all science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead, but the darker secret of why he is alive.
What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.
Therefore, with our talents, we have to try and make of our life a constant service to others. Making the most of the gifts that we have been given. Using the service of our prayer, being ready to serve on the cross, to have our service with a smile. Seeing opportunities for service in professional work, family life, apostolate, in the care of our health.
Service to the church through being formed better, so as to be a better apostle. We have to foster our desires to serve.
The whole purpose of our education is to learn to serve. There was a professor who asked some people in a university with a Catholic ethos what they were doing in this university. They said, well, we’re here to get a good degree, so we can get a good job, so we can get a good salary. He wasn’t very happy with that reply. He went to a school with the Catholic ethos and asked them, what are you doing in this school? And the reply he got was, well, we’re here to get a good grade in our final exams, so we can get into a good university, so we can get a good job, so we can get a good salary.
He said, those answers reflect the failure of Catholic education. Because the purpose of Catholic education is not to be served, but to serve. Christ came to serve.
We give our affection very often through service, in always having time for other people, and having that word or gesture that only people who love know are important. This is of particular relevance in the family. It means having a habitual disposition to forget ourselves.
In The Way of the Cross, we’re told when a person really lives charity, there’s no time for self-seeking. There’s no room left for pride. We will not find occasion for anything but service. And in The Forge, there’s no greater self-mastery than to make oneself a servant, the willing servant of all souls.
In the whole context of the passion, this help does not add up to very much. But for Jesus, a smile, a word, a gesture, a little bit of love is enough for him to pour out his grace bountifully on the soul of his friend. Years later, Simon’s sons, Christian by then, would be known and held in high esteem among their brothers in the faith. And it all started with this unexpected meeting with the cross.
“I went to those who were not looking for me, I was found by those that sought me not” (Isa. 65:1). At times the cross appears without our looking for it. It is Christ who is seeking us out. And if by chance, before this unexpected cross, which perhaps is therefore more difficult to understand, your heart were to show repugnance, don’t give it consolations, and filled with a noble compassion when it asks for them, say to it slowly, as one speaking in confidence, heart, heart on the cross.
So, we could ask Our Lord that we might faithfully fulfill our duties, taking care of the little jobs, being willing to be last in everything, not being envious or jealous of other people who may have five talents, more talents than we have, but thanking God for the gifts that he’s given to us and making the effort to do the best with the means that we have, making the most of the gifts that we’ve been given in all circumstances.
There’s a story of a water bearer in China who had two large pots. Each hung on the ends of a pole which he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it, while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years, this went on daily with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots of water to his house. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect for that which it was made. But the cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.
After two years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream, saying, I’m ashamed of myself. Because of this crack in my side, it causes water to leak out all the way back to your house. The bearer of the pot said, did you not notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side? That’s because I’ve always known about your flaw. And I planted flower seeds on your side of the path. And every day while we walk back, you’ve watered them. For two years, I’ve been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.
Each of us have our unique flaws. We’re all cracked pots. But it’s the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. You just have to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.
This could be a good story to tell all our cracked pot friends. Let us ask Our Lord that we might serve in the place where we are. It’s there that God’s graces will help us to a maximum degree, in this job, in this family, in this class, in this profession. God wants us to be there without any complaints or wishful thinking. To serve the Lord with cheerfulness in the home, at the office, in this marriage. And always be ready to serve somewhere else where God may call us. To change our job, our profession, our place, our home occasionally, well that can also be part of service.
St. John of the Cross says, to be prepared to lose and see all others win belongs to valiant souls. One of the qualities of such souls is that they will give rather than receive, even until they come to give up themselves.
So we have to try and overcome our laziness and our fear. We have to try and serve others as we would like to be served. Service alone is not enough. No husband or wife just wants service. They want love. We have to try and serve with refinement, also with not too much service so that we might get on others’ nerves, and that we pass unnoticed in our serving. It’s very good that we give children the opportunity to serve. Children love to serve.
And often our effort of service is a very good example. Sometimes the most valuable gift we can give others is good example. Our Lord began the whole mystery of the Eucharist with the washing of feet. At the level of feet, we’re all equal. We can think of the social nature of service. All our talents are a gift. Otherwise we can become greedy and ugly. St. Paul says, “What have you that you have not received?” (1 Cor. 4:7).
Thus, we have to try and get to know what talents we have. There may be unknown talents or undiscovered talents. It can be a great moment in our education or in our formation, gift of grace, certain moments in our life when maybe we, through the help of others, teachers, formers, we discover certain talents that maybe have been latent. And this can be very relevant for the elderly. There may be talents there that Our Lord wants us to develop in our old age. Like good wine, we improve with time. The talent of living a spirit of abandonment, of faith, of peace, of supernatural outlook.
We can also be reminded that our intelligence is not a virtue but a gift. We have to use it well. And also get into the habit of admiring the virtue of people who use their talents well, not just the gift itself. We need a certain constancy to place ourselves at the service of God. Here I am because you have called me.
Therefore, our abilities, our work, our achievements, our prestige, our good name, these are all meant for the glory of God. We can all live a lie. If we do not serve others whom we see, how can we serve God whom we do not see? And we serve not for personal interest but for love of God.
The rich young man asked Our Lord, “What must I do to achieve eternal life?” (Mark 10:17). He was all out for self-development, so much so that “Jesus looked upon him and loved him” (Mark 10:21). Christ gives him the way to break out of the imprisonment of his mentality. He’s looking for something that will last. Christ gives him the commandments. It’s not a matter of giving a day or a week, but giving his life as a ransom for many. We serve to the extent that we forget ourselves. It can be the beginning of true happiness.
Power, like money, is not intrinsically evil. God describes himself as omnipotent. And scripture says “power belongs to God” (Ps. 62:11). But given that man had abused the power granted to him, transforming it into control by the strongest and oppression of the weakest, what did God do? To give us an example, God stripped himself of his omnipotence. From being omnipotent, he made himself impotent. “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil. 2:7). He transformed power into service. Thus, a new power is revealed, that of the cross. “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise” (1 Cor. 1:27), St. Paul says.
In the Magnificat, Mary sings in advance this silent revolution brought about by the coming of Christ. “He has put down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly” (Luke 1:52). Who is accused under this denunciation of power? Only dictators and tyrants? Would that it were so. It would refer in this case to exceptions. Instead, it affects us all. Power has infinite ramifications. It gets in everywhere, as certain sands of the Sahara when the sirocco wind blows. The problem of power therefore is not posed in the political realm. If we stay in that realm, we do no more than join the group of those who are already ready to strike others’ breasts for their own faults. It is easy to denounce collective faults or those in the past. It’s far more difficult when it comes to personal and present faults.
Our Lady says that God dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart. He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones. She singles out implicitly a precise area in which the will to power must be combated. Our own hearts, our minds, the thoughts of the heart can become a kind of throne on which we sit to dictate laws and thunder against those who do not submit to us. We are, at least in our wishes, if not in our deeds, the mighty on thrones. Sadly, in the family itself, it’s possible that our innate will to power and abuse might manifest itself, causing constant concern to those who are victims of it, which is often, not always, the women.
The Emperor Charlemagne is one of the great figures in the history of Western civilization. His empire, though not perfect, was a bright chapter in the dark ages of the barbarian invasions of Europe. He preserved Western culture and advanced the cause of Christian civilization, planting seeds of holiness and prosperity that would flourish centuries later. His tomb can still be visited in the German city of Aachen, where his empire was headquartered back in the 800s. He’s buried in the central space beneath the dome of the Imperial Church there, called Aix-la-Chapelle. The burial chamber is a subterranean room. In the middle of the room is a marble chair, a chair on which kings used to be crowned, placed over his grave. On the chair sits a sculptured image of the emperor wrapped in his royal robes with a book of the Gospels open on his lap. There he sits, cold, silent, motionless. The dead man’s finger points to the words of Jesus, “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?” (Mark 8:36). That was the perspective that made Charlemagne both a great man, a great emperor, and even more importantly, a great Christian.
Any greatness that we have belongs to God. God reads our heart. In carrying out the tasks entrusted to us, we should not think that we are indispensable. We should form others so that they could substitute us with advantage. We should give them responsibilities and room for initiative, avoiding any personalizing of things.
St. Josemaría says, positions, who’s in, who’s out, what does it matter to you? You have come, you tell me, to be useful, to serve with complete availability. Behave accordingly. You comment and criticize, without you it seems nothing is done properly. Don’t be angry if I tell you that you are behaving like an arrogant despot.
And in The Forge he says, renew each day the effective desire to annihilate yourself, to deny yourself, to forget yourself, to walk in novitate sensus with a new life, exchanging this misery of ours for all the hidden and eternal grandeur of God. Lord, rescue me from myself. Lord, grant me the grace to give up everything that has to do with myself, that I should have no other concern than your glory. In other words, your love, everything for love.
In the gospel, service is opposed to power. In service, we place a power for others, not over others. Power confers authority, but service confers something more: an authority that means respect, esteem, a true ascendancy over others. The gospel also opposes power with non-violence. That is power of another kind, moral, not physical. Jesus said he could have asked the Father for twelve legions of angels (Matt. 26:53) to defeat his enemies, who were just about to crucify him. But he preferred to pray for them. And it was in this way that he achieved victory. Service is not always expressed in silence and submission to power. Sometimes it can impel one to raise one’s voice against power and its abuses. That is what Jesus did. In his life, he experienced the abuse of the political and religious power of the time. That is why he is so close to all those in any environment—family, the community, civil society—who go through the experience of an evil and tyrannical power. With his help, it’s possible not to be overcome by evil as he was not. More than that, “to overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21).
Let us ask Our Lord that we might have the grace to put our talents at the service of God and of society. To think, what can I contribute?
Being a Christian is not always comfortable. Through his church, God is constantly guiding us along the path to personal fulfillment and to social betterment. We can’t claim to be Christ’s followers if we ignore that guidance. That’s why it’s a contradiction for a Catholic politician to be pro-abortion. As Catholics, we know that abortion is a grave violation of human rights because it kills an innocent human being. It’s not a matter of personal opinion, it’s a moral truth and scientific truth. Christ himself, through the official teaching of his church, has assured us so. Therefore, anyone who claims to believe in Christ must also be pro-life. John Paul II says unconditionally pro-life, open both to protecting the lives of the unborn and to supporting the needs of unwed mothers.
This is why it is a contradiction for a Catholic lawyer to tamper with evidence, or for a Catholic doctor to overcharge his patients, or a Catholic athlete to use illegal performance enhancing drugs, or for a Catholic businessman to deal in pornography. We can’t pick and choose among the teachings we find in the Bible and the Catechism as if it were a buffet-style dinner. We can’t say that we agree with the first and second commandments, but not with the sixth and the seventh. If we do that, we’re building our lives on sand, hearing Christ’s words without acting on them, being unfaithful friends. And sooner or later, we will collapse. Christian faith always involves humble, loving obedience to our Creator and Redeemer. Only in this obedience of faith will we discover true freedom, just as we are only free to send astronauts to outer space by obeying the laws of physics.
All our talents have a social purpose. Our Lord, when he came to reckoning with the servants, he said, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Because you have been faithful over a few, I will set you over many” (Matt. 25:21). Hopefully, through spiritual direction, we discover our talents. We may only have a grain of sand to bring, but God wants us to bring it. Let us ask Our Lord to remove the covering from our eyes so that we see things as they are before God with his light.
Charles V was one of the last great European emperors. In the 1500s, he protected Europe from the vicious and tireless attacks of the Turkish Muslim empire. At the same time, he brought together the leaders of Europe to reestablish political and religious unity among Christians after the revolt of Martin Luther. He almost succeeded until his most powerful ally betrayed him. In the prime of his life, one of his closest and most well-loved advisors, who had served the emperor since his youth, fell ill. Charles was at his bedside as the man was dying. The emperor was deeply moved at the man’s suffering and wanted to comfort him. He said, my friend, you have been a faithful servant all these years. Please let me now do something for you. Ask anything of me and I will do it. The dying man turned his weak eyes to the king and whispered, Sire, there’s one great favor I desire. The emperor was glad at this and leaned forward, “Tell me, what is it?” He said, “Give me one more day of life, just one day more.” The face of the emperor fell. He answered simply, you know that I have not the power. The man smiled weakly and said, yes, I know. Even the greatest earthly king cannot give life. And now you see how foolish I’ve been. I served you well all these years, but I gave no thought to my heavenly king. And now I must go to him with empty hands. Pray for me. And those were his last words.
So, we could ask Our Lord that we might use our time well. It’s part of the means that we have been given. John Paul II said, I’m ever more conscious that the moment is approaching when I will stand before God with my whole life, from my youth in Wadowice and later in Krakow, and finally Rome. What will we say on our deathbed? Oh my God, I am heartily sorry that I didn’t spend more time at the office.
St. John Chrysostom said, all workers welcome the end of their pains and exertions. Gladly and often does the wanderer ask the distance to the inn. The tradesman longs for the settlement of his accounts. The farmer counts the days to the harvest. The student eagerly awaits the distribution of prizes at graduation. In like manner, the true servant of God longs for the day when the heavenly rest awaits him, when he settles his temporal account, when the angels reap his harvest, and he will be rewarded with the prize of everlasting glory. Most people die as they have lived. There are very few last-minute conversions. Therefore, the goal of each day should be to live well, to use the means that God has given me today. St. Josemaría says, time is short for loving, for giving, for making atonement. We mustn’t squander this period of the world’s history which God has entrusted to each one of us.
Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, Christians of all denominations were routinely persecuted for their faith by the communist regime. One small group of believers used to meet in a family home every Sunday. They would arrive at different times to avoid suspicion. And one particular Sunday, they were all safely inside the building with curtains drawn and doors locked. They had been singing and praying for a while when the door burst open and two armed soldiers rushed in. One shouted, everybody up against the wall! If you wish to renounce your faith in Jesus Christ, you can leave now and no harm will come to you. Two people left right away, and then a third and fourth straggled out. This is your last chance, the soldier warned, either you turn your back on this Jesus of yours and stay or suffer the consequences. Two more slipped out, crying and ashamed, but no one else moved. Parents with small children trembling beside them looked down reassuringly. They fully expected to be gunned down on the spot or imprisoned. One of the soldiers said, “Keep your hands up, but this time in praise to Our Lord Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, we too are Christians. We were sent to another house church like this several weeks ago and we became believers.” The other soldier added, “We are sorry to have frightened those who left, but we have learned that unless people are willing to die for their faith, they cannot be trusted.”
In times of trouble, our faith is tested. And we have a chance to do for Christ what he did for us, to love him to the end. Let us ask Our Lady that she might give us the grace to make good use of the talents, of the means that God has given us each day of our life.
I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
EW