- First Reading: Prov 31:10–13, 19–20, 30–31
- Responsorial Psalm: Ps 128:1–2, 3, 4–5
- Second Reading: 1 Thess 5:1–6
- Gospel: Matt 25:14–30
It’s easy to look at this parable and think there is some injustice. The servants who receive a great amount put it to work and come back with double. But the servant who receives the least does not squander his master’s property. He protects it. He doesn’t earn anything more, but he does make sure his master loses nothing. And yet he is punished quite severely. At first, that can seem unfair.
Part of the difficulty is that we hear the numbers five, two, and one, and we think we understand what has been given. We’re already sympathetic to the guy who gets the one, because it sounds as though he has received so little. The Gospel tells us that the master distributes his possessions according to each servant’s ability. But those small numbers still hide something enormous.
A talent was not a type of coin. It was a large unit of weight, used here to measure silver. A single talent of silver represented about twenty years’ wages for a day laborer. So the first servant is entrusted with roughly a hundred years’ wages. The second receives forty years’ wages. And even the servant with the least ability receives twenty years’ wages.
Even the one who receives the least has been entrusted with an immense amount. The master is extraordinarily generous. He takes a risk on every one of his servants. He gives every one of them a great opportunity. Before any of them has done anything with the money, he has already placed extraordinary trust in them.
And that is the key to understanding this parable. We have to recognize the generosity at the beginning if we’re going to understand the responses that follow.
The first two servants respond as people who recognize what has been entrusted to them. They are grateful for the opportunity. They want to make their master proud, to honor the trust he has already shown them. So they go out and put his wealth to work. They bring back double what they received.
Their gratitude becomes action. Their love for their master takes a visible form. They value the relationship, and they show that by what they do with what he has placed in their hands.
But the last servant cannot see the generosity of the gift or the trust being placed in him. He sees only what he might lose. He is afraid of his master’s retribution, afraid that everything will be taken away. And because fear governs his response, he buries the money.
He has been given an opportunity, but he refuses to act on it. He cannot receive his master’s trust with gratitude or allow it to become fruitful. And in the end, the very thing he fears comes to pass. He loses what was entrusted to him, and it is given to one who has shown that he will put it to work.
God has given all of us immense gifts. They come in different varieties and in different degrees. We have not all been entrusted with the same things. But each of us has received something that can bear fruit. And what God desires from us is gratitude: that we recognize his generosity and respond to it with love.
He wants us to desire a relationship with him, to love him in our actions as well as our words. He wants us to put his gifts to work, so that there is more holiness in this world, more love in this world, more gratitude in this world. He has placed good things in our hands so that, through us, those good things can multiply.
We cannot do that if we live only in fear. Fear of loss, fear of death, fear of hell—these things can motivate us to a degree. But fear alone cannot build the relationship God desires with us. If our whole response to God is governed by fear of punishment, we have not yet learned to respond to his generosity with love.
And we are called to love. We are called to recognize what God has already given us and to let gratitude move us to act. The gifts have already been placed in our hands. Now we have the opportunity to put them to use.
So let us recognize the immense generosity of our God, even in the midst of all our struggles. Let us find within ourselves the gratitude that can move us beyond fear and into love. He has given us so much. Let us offer it back to him by putting it to work in building up his kingdom, so that when he comes again, we may place before him the fruits of what he has entrusted to us.