Reflection on the Gospel of the Saturday In The Twenty-First Week In Ordinary Time
Matthew 25:14-30
God created this world and gave its stewardship to man, to take care of creation. God created each one of us with talents and its each persons responsibility to safeguard our talents and multiply them and become a blessing for whole world. In todays gospel, 3 people were given Gold talents. The ones who received 10 talents and 5 talents yielded additional talents by their hard work, faithfulness and efforts. Their master pleased with their faithfulness, rewarded additional talents to both of them. On the other hand the last man received one talent, according to his capacity and aptitude, but he buried it, and failed to use it and therefore he was unproductive in anyway because of his laziness and fear. Even that talent was taken away from him.
In our life we too have been gifted with talents by God, but many of us misuse our talents or are not aware of them, or simply blindly follow the footsteps of others and our unproductive. Some times parents become obstacles to us building our talents as they impose on their children to carry forward their own legacies through completing their broken dreams, learning their own hobbies or carrying forward family business’ . For eg. If any one in the family involved in any charity work or in politics or in business or in professional then entire family follows the same path instead of developing their own gifts and talents. When you sow seeds into the ground they are small, but after pouring water and receiving sunlight it starts growing and finally bears fruits. Similarly we have to take steps to develop our own talents by taking the effort to increase our talents, and make possible for God to help us and make us bountifully prosperous.
We celebrate today the Feast of St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church. He was a theologian and great philosopher. He too hid his talents inside himself, and his life was stagnating. His sinful and wayward life did not satisfy hi because he had bottled up his talents. St Augustine was drawn to St. Ambrose preaching and slowly had a conversion of heart. He desired to become like St. Ambrose, and through the liberating words of Christ, preached through the mouth of St. Ambrose, he recognised his call and talents. As a result he grew in his Faith of Christ, and was faithful to him for the rest of lifetime. God blessed and made him a mighty instrument in the church. St. Augustine’s adaptation of classical thought to Christian teaching created a theological system of great power and lasting influence in the church. His numerous written works, especially, “The Confessions of S. Augustine,” brought about a tremendous change in the Church. From St. Augustine’s life story we come to know that every hidden talent shall be revealed at God’s appointed time, we simply need to co-operate with God, and nourish them.
Believe, “Nothing is impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37).
Jesus is awaiting for us and is ready to bless us with talents, to bring tremendous change in the world. Are we ready to accept his blessings?
