Saturday of Week 21 in Ordinary Time
1 Cor 1:26-31
Mt 25:14-30
“For everyone who has will be given more…but from the man who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
If you asked me a few years ago what my greatest fear is, I would have said that I don’t want to be the servant who buried her talent and be thrown out into the dark where there is weeping and suffering.
Let’s put the parable of the talents into perspective; in the New Testament, a talent is roughly equal to 6000 denarii. With one denarius the usual wage for one day’s labour, then one talent is worth 20 years of labour. I am always amazed at how Jesus can teach us, using the most common and mundane things to explain something profound. Talent was a monetary measurement in ancient times, but is one of the many measurements of a person in current times.
In the past, I was stuck on the concept of not utilizing what God has given me to the best of my abilities. Therefore, I would be thrown out or discarded like some spoiled fruit. This misguided thinking of mine was focusing on the wrong thing — I was buying into the lie of the deceiver and prone to despair. I thought I would be failing if I did not do “great things” with the talent God has given me. It is only with the help of the Holy Spirit, that I come to understand a little better of what this parable truly means.
Instead of focusing on talents (money or aptitudes), we should be focusing on the ‘gift’ itself. For everything is a gift from God — our talents, our treasures, our possessions, our work, our family, our friends, even our faith, everything is from God. God’s gifts are graces. With the gift or grace of faith, we have great responsibility. We need to nurture, cultivate and growth our faith. “How?” you may ask. By prayers, receiving sacraments, deeper learning of the Bible, and by sharing our faith. The old adage of ‘use it or lose it’ is so true in this case. Like any skills we wish to acquire, if we don’t practice it, we will become poor at it; but if we practice it consistently, we can soon master the skill.
Therefore, with the grace of faith we have received, the more we use it or share it, the more we will be given. If we fail to exercise our faith, even the little amount of grace that we have received will be lost and taken away. To be clear, it is not God who will take away our faith; but the enemy — the deceiver — with our help, which reduces the grace of faith in us.
So, in the light of this new understanding, I am not caught up on what and how to use the talent that God has given me. But I am more focused on the grace that I received. The grace of faith, which is something I want to treasure, cultivate, and share.
(Today’s OXYGEN by Winnie Kung)
Prayer: My most loving Lord, please give us the grace of faith so that we can trust and surrender ourselves to You completely.
Thanksgiving: Heavenly Father, we thank you for Your generous gifts of grace in our lives.
OXYGEN 
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