Thoughts on talents

 

Mt. 25: 14-30 33rd Sunday of OT (A)

Parable of the Talents 15 November 2026

         

 Our English word talent, an ability, an aptitude, actually comes from this parable. The Greek word talanton (talanton), used in the parable, meant a balance scale; a unit of weight, and a large unit of money. So, the Parable of the Talents is a parable about weighing, and a parable about reckoning. The master demands an accounting from his servants.  So will Our Lord demand of us.

 

           The last Sundays of the Church’s year focus on the end, the Four Last Things: death, judgment, heaven, hell. The parable teaches that we will be judged according to how well we have used and developed the gifts God has given to each of us. There is an old saying: “What you are is God’s gift to you; what you become is your gift to God.” (Anon.)

           There are five important teachings we can draw from the Parable of the Talents:

           1^st There are differing gifts, differing amounts: 

It’s not the talent that matters. What matters is how a person uses that talent. 

We are not equal in talent, but we can be equal in effort.

 

           2^nd Good effort means more work: 

The two servants who have done well are not given rest;

      rather, they are given greater work and greater responsibilities. 

 

           3^rd Exerting no effort results in punishment: 

The third servant does nothing with his talent. He is condemned because he would not try.

 

           4^th To him who has, more will be given: 

If one’s talent is exercised and developed, greater good will result. If one’s talent is not used,

                 it will be lost

                 

           5^th The only way to keep a gift is to use it in the service of God and neighbor.

                 You can probably recall that you studied a certain subject in high school or college, but if you                  haven’t used it since, you’ve lost it. [fitness, golf, piano, high school Latin, French, etc.]

           We must honestly examine our lives: What talents, blessings, gifts, abilities has God given me?

It is death to hide the talent; it is eternal life to use it in the service of God and neighbor.

           According to Our Lord's teaching in the Parable of the Talents:

Faithful use of one's gifts will lead to participation in the fullness of the Kingdom,

but lazy inactivity will lead to exclusion from the Kingdom of God.

           

           So, we should always strive to say to the Lord with sincerity: “I have done my best.”     

                                                                                                                                                                            

Fr. Don Saunders, S.J.

Thoughts on worship

 

Memorial of Saint Martin of Tours, Bishop

Luke 17:11–19

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus heals ten lepers, saying, "Go show yourselves to the priests." The lepers who begged for a cure were not simply concerned about their medical condition; they were Israelites in exile from the temple—and hence they were a very apt symbol of the general condition of scattered, exiled, wandering Israel. In curing them, Jesus was, symbolically speaking, gathering the tribes and bringing them back to the worship of the true God. That’s why he tells the lepers, "Go show yourselves to the priests." In other words, go back to the temple from which you’ve been away for so long. I propose that the lepers here stand not so much for the socially ostracized but for the ones who have wandered away from right worship, the ones who are no longer able or willing to worship the true God. What is so important about worship? The Protestant theologian Paul Tillich said that the key to understanding a person was to uncover his "ultimate concern," another way of saying, "what he worships." What do you worship? If it’s not the living God, you’ve wandered into the land of exile. You have become, in fact, unclean. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on patience

 

Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matt 25:1–13

Friends, the parable about the ten virgins in today’s Gospel speaks about waiting for the Lord’s second coming and the arrival of his kingdom. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead signaled to the early Christians that Jesus inaugurated a new world that was turning back the power of sin. Somehow, they knew that the old world, though it persists, has been broken. It’s been defeated. And now what are they doing? They’re waiting for the definitive arrival of the new world that Jesus has instituted. Christianity, in a certain sense, is a religion of fulfillment. The Lord has come; the incarnation and the redemption have taken place. It’s happened. But, in another sense, Christianity is permanently a religion of waiting, because we wait in joyful hope for the second coming of the Lord. We wait until this salvation has been fulfilled. That’s why there’s a permanent Advent quality to Christian life. We wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior. And since it’s hard to wait, we need the virtue of patience. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on Wealth

 

Thirty-First Week in Ordinary Time

Luke 16:9–15

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus teaches us to approach wealth with wisdom. Let me quote a sermon of St. John Chrysostom on the right approach to money: “Those who love money are fierce in the pursuit of it, like wild animals pursuing their prey. They betray, cheat, or exploit their closest friend when there is gold and silver to be gained. They learn to make their consciences as numb as fingers on a cold day. Their eyes become blind to the suffering they cause, and their ears deaf to the cries of those whose lives are ruined by them.” Those are strong words, and they shook the people at the time who heard them. And they shake us today. But can you hear he’s speaking in the tones of Jesus? What’s the ground of all this for John Chrysostom? Why does he say it? It’s very clear. Because everything we have—our bodies, our life, our breath, our minds, our accomplishments, and, yes, our wealth—is a sheer gift given to us by a generous God, and, therefore, it ought never to be hoarded for our own purposes but always used for God’s purposes. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on Ministry

 

A Liberating and Creative Presence

From: The Road to Peace

Our true self is in God. As we are told again and again in John's Gospel, we can love others because God first loves us. The spiritual life is coming into touch with that first love, which says that we belong to God. As Jesus said, “Just as I don't belong to the world, neither do you” – but you, rather, belong to the Lover who gives you to yourself. We can be a liberating and creative presence in the world only if we don't belong to the world, if we don't depend on the world for our real identity. This is the real paradox of ministry: that we can minister to the world only if we don't belong to it.

Reflection Question: In what ways do you feel that you do not belong to the world …. and in what ways do you find yourself entangled in the world?

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines. - 1 Corinthians 12: 7 - 11

Henri Nouwen (1932–1996) was a priest, professor, and spiritual writer. He authored over 40 books on the spiritual life and spent his final years at L'Arche Daybreak, a community for people with intellectual disabilities. Drawing from his own journey of vulnerability and faith, he invites seekers into deeper intimacy with God, themselves, and others.

More Books by Henri Nouwen

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Thoughts on Taking Up the Cross

 

Memorial of Saint Charles Borromeo, Bishop

Luke 14:25-33

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus says that a disciple must carry his own cross and follow him. All of us sinners tend to see the universe turning around our ego, our needs, our projects, our plans, and our likes and dislikes. True conversion—the metanoia that Jesus talks about—is so much more than moral reform, though it includes that. It has to do with a complete shift in consciousness, a whole new way of looking at one’s life. Jesus’s teaching must have been gut-wrenching to his first-century audience: “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” His listeners knew what the cross meant: a death in utter agony, nakedness, and humiliation. They knew it in all of its awful power. If God is self-forgetting love even to the point of death, then we must be such love. The cross, in short, must become the very structure of the Christian life. This is just what Jesus shows on his terrible cross. And this is just what we, his followers, must imitate. Taking up the cross means not just being willing to suffer but being willing to suffer as he did, absorbing violence and hatred through our forgiveness and nonviolence. Bishop Robert Barron

Thoughts on All Souls Day

 

Commemoration of
All the Faithful Departed

 

Listen to the Story of the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

The Church has encouraged prayer for the dead from the earliest times as an act of Christian charity. “If we had no care for the dead,” Augustine noted, “we would not be in the habit of praying for them.” Yet pre-Christian rites for the deceased retained such a strong hold on the superstitious imagination that a liturgical commemoration was not observed until the early Middle Ages, when monastic communities began to mark an annual day of prayer for the departed members.

 

In the middle of the 11th century, Saint Odilo, abbot of Cluny, France, decreed that all Cluniac monasteries offer special prayers and sing the Office for the Dead on November 2, the day after the feast of All Saints. The custom spread from Cluny and was finally adopted throughout the Roman Church.

 

The theological underpinning of the feast is the acknowledgment of human frailty. Since few people achieve perfection in this life but, rather, go to the grave still scarred with traces of sinfulness, some period of purification seems necessary before a soul comes face-to-face with God. The Council of Trent affirmed this purgatory state and insisted that the prayers of the living can speed the process of purification.

 

Superstition easily clung to the observance. Medieval popular belief held that the souls in purgatory could appear on this day in the form of witches, toads or will-o’-the-wisps. Graveside food offerings supposedly eased the rest of the dead.

Observances of a more religious nature have survived. These include public processions or private visits to cemeteries and decorating graves with flowers and lights. This feast is observed with great fervor in Mexico.

 

Reflection

Whether or not one should pray for the dead is one of the great arguments which divide Christians. Appalled by the abuse of indulgences in the Church of his day, Martin Luther rejected the concept of purgatory. Yet prayer for a loved one is, for the believer, a way of erasing any distance, even death. In prayer we stand in God’s presence in the company of someone we love, even if that person has gone before us into death.

Remembering the
Faithful Departed

 

Reflect

As Catholics we believe the veil between this world and the next is as nothing in the mind of God. We pray for our dead, as we believe the saints pray for us. Let us be mindful of that today.

 

Pray

Father,
you are the God of the living.
No one born of the spirit
shall know death,
for your love is everlasting.
I pray now
for the souls of those
who have died,
that they may be as gold
in the furnace of your grace.
Welcome them home as saints,
resplendent in your light.
Amen.

 

Act

Think of someone who has died and offer this prayer for them. If you cannot think of anyone, then pray for those unknown to you who have no one else to pray for them.

 

Today's Pause+Pray was written by Clifford Hennings, OFM. Learn more here!