The Parable of the Talents

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 25:14-30.

Jesus told his disciples this parable: “A man going on a journey called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them.To one he gave five talents; to another, two; to a third, one– to each according to his ability. Then he went away. Immediatelythe one who received five talents went and traded with them, and made another five. Likewise, the one who received two made another two. But the man who received one went off and dug a hole in the ground and buried his master's money.After a long time the master of those servants came back and settled accounts with them. The one who had received five talents came forward bringing the additional five. He said, 'Master, you gave me five talents. See, I have made five more.'His master said to him, 'Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master's joy.' (Then) the one who had received two talents also came forward and said, 'Master, you gave me two talents. See, I have made two more.'His master said to him, 'Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master's joy.' Then the one who had received the one talent came forward and said, 'Master, I knew you were a demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you did not scatter; so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground. Here it is back.' His master said to him in reply, 'You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I did not plant and gather where I did not scatter?Should you not then have put my money in the bank so that I could have got it back with interest on my return? Now then! Take the talent from him and give it to the one with ten.For to everyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.And throw this useless servant into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.'”

---

When you think about it, the master of the household made a gamble when he left his possessions to his servants. When many of us think that the Gospel is all about the talents, I see it as about a Master who put faith in his servants. What the servants did to the talents is but a reflection of how much value they placed on the faith that the Master showed them.

It would be easy to focus too much on our ability to increase investments and value. Afterall we are gifted creatures who gifted with creativity and imagination can turn into reality dreams and visions of the future. Along with it also is the opposite fear and insecurity that paralizes our spiritual and creative faculties. But God is not a businessman nor are we created to be investment firms.

God had often compared Himself as a Shelpherd or a Gardener. Of all the analogies to human work he chose that which represents most his nature - nurturing love. I believe this framework of love allows him to put faith in each of us knowing too well human frailty. So he lavishly grants his blessings and gifts to his sons and daughters, giving them the talents to develop, the time to grow, and the environment needed for them to bear fruit. 

I now believe the talents would not stand by themselves without the wager of faith that God has placed in man.

It is right then that man should respond in faith. Or better to bear fruit in faith after faith has been planted in him. A Faith that believes in a God who created us good and deserving to be loved. A Faith that values giftedness and personhood. A Faith that allows and invites others to bear fruit together. For the Lord has planted a vineyard and not just one plant, he pastures a flock and not just one sheep.

In the parable of talents, I see a Gardener and a Shepherd who makes a gamble in his servants. He leaves all that he has to them. Will they respond in faith?

Where it all began

I was talking to Ate Mindex in the CLAY Office last week during my short stint in Cebu. Our chat brought to topic the history of Cebu which for a long time had perplexed me. The History that was taught me in elementary studies touched little on the topic. However, I feel that there is more to the story of the place where I grew up than what I know now.

This is always the question of history and its importance. History is tied to culture and both are essential to a people. If Cebuanos were to remain ignorant of their rich history, even pre-dating Spanish colonization, then we would never fully understand ourselves as a people much less set a path for the future.

One of the questions that intrigue me is the place of Pasil and of San Nicolas in history. Was it really probable that Magellan landed in the shores of Suba and San Nicolas? Was the kingdom of Raja Humabon established in the area of San Nicolas? And much more importantly, did the first Filipino baptized Christians live there?

In the dawn of 500 years of Roman Catholicism in the Philippines, I find these questions become more important. An air of ignorance and lack of interest in our history as a people looms over the celebration. How can we ever claim to be "us" when we never fully understood who we "were"? The dilapidated and disharmonious sight of the area reflect this reality. As the celebration breaks the dawn, our people remain sleepy and stagnant to this glorious arrival of Christ in Cebu's shores.

I believe that we need to address the following points:

1. Educate and enlighten our people to our rich history. There are already good online sources for reading: Pigafetta's account of Magellan's last days in Cebu and with it the description of the early Cebuanos; an interesting article on the Kingdom of Sugbu or the Rajanate of Cebu; or Eskrima's quest to understand its history.
2. Incite people to take interest in Cebuano, Philippine, and Christian history. Get to know the etymology of the name of your hometown. Read and share folklore.
3. Reflect and discern on the identity and future of our people. What is our identity as Cebuanos, as Filipinos in this globalized world? How do we proceed from here in which we embrace progress but at the same time preserve our traditions, values, and culture?
4. Push our leaders, both government and Church, to prepare for the 500 years celebration. Will we let this chance to celebrate a historical landmark slip through our hands when it is in our very lifetime?

Is this really the face of our identity, the haunting of our past, and the vision of our future?

When We Think The Universe Owes Us

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 20:1-16a. 

Jesus told his disciples this parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard.
After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.
Going out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace,
and he said to them, 'You too go into my vineyard, and I will give you what is just.'
So they went off. (And) he went out again around noon, and around three o'clock, and did likewise.
Going out about five o'clock, he found others standing around, and said to them, 'Why do you stand here idle all day?'
They answered, 'Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, 'You too go into my vineyard.'
When it was evening the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Summon the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and ending with the first.'
When those who had started about five o'clock came, each received the usual daily wage.
So when the first came, they thought that they would receive more, but each of them also got the usual wage.
And on receiving it they grumbled against the landowner,
saying, 'These last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who bore the day's burden and the heat.'
He said to one of them in reply, 'My friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?
Take what is yours and go. What if I wish to give this last one the same as you?
(Or) am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?'
Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last."

I naturally would feel for those who worked in the first hour in the landowner's vineyard. It is natural to ask for remuneration commensurate to our work. At first glance, the landowner seems unfair in giving everyone the same wage. Those who came first worked the most.

I've tasted for myself how to work the land. In 2008 our Summer Camp was held in Victorias where we had the chance to experience working in an hacienda, working among the famous sugar canes of Negros. It was damn hard. You have to sweat it out, break your back, and bend down to the earth. Such experience taught me the value of work and hard earned money. It taught me values of simplicity, hard work, and faith.

But the message of the Gospel is not about proportionate wages or justice. When we think the universe owes us for everything we have gone through we forget that it has been long existing before we came and it would go on its existence with or without us. The fact is our existence, no matter how difficult and tragic, is grace and gift.

We all learn that life is unfair. But that is the vision of unbelieving eyes. Life is a big stage and we are all actors in it. Some are given big roles, some smaller, still some supporting roles. But the characters that we live in all grow according to the story. Each has a story that is in itself beautiful and mysterious, unique and unrepeatable. God's generosity is His act of dedicating Himself to each one, like a gardener tending each seedling, His grace commensurate to the needs of each soul. Our sense of justice is simply different than God's.

To demand from God that we be rewarded more because we've lived life better than others is a selfish act. One has focused more on one's effort than the grace of God that has made possible such effort. Salvation is not a competition. It is blind to the fact that we are all beggars before God, all broken and wilted before the great Gardener, all unfinished tales before the great Playwright.

So the Kingdom of Heaven is all about God's will that we all be in it. He wants all His children in. He wants all His vines to bear fruit. He wants all characters to develop. And He works on each one, meticulously following them up in their ups and downs, trimming and fertilizing wherever it is needed. His grace envelopes all. His mercy pours out to those who need it most.

Working it out in life? Yes, it's difficult. But know that reward (more than wage) is not gained by the workers but freely given by the landowner.

Learn from the Meek and Humble Heart

It is always a challenge for us Salesians to live out the meekness and humility of the Good Shepherd. The spirituality of St Francis of Sales and of St John Bosco tells us that if we are to love, let it be sweet and gentle.

This song by Jose Mari Chan always reminds me of the power of gentleness. Against the power greatly desired by the world for its fierceness and rawness we proclaim the sweetness of Divine Love that cannot be captured in words. It is a gentle love, empowering and transforming everything.

Whenever I look at my own weaknesses, whenever I catch myself angry, impulsive, and domineering, I remember Sts Francis and John who spent their lives conquering their own nature to configure themselves to the image of the Good Shepherd.

All saints are meek and humble. They have become Christ.

Solemnity of Sts Peter and Paul

courtesy of professorjohnston.com

Many commentaries today would speak of the differences and similarities between the two great apostles we celebrate today. St Peter held the primacy of Jesus' Church while St Paul brought it to ends of the world. The former they say belonged to the margins of society while the latter enjoyed the center of it all. The beautiful thing about these two lives, however, is not their beginnings nor their end. It is not even just their mission, sufferings, and martyrdom that makes them great. These two saints are great because Jesus chose them and made them great.

It is wonderful to think that both actually come from the margins of human existence, one from obscurity while the other from blindness. Yet Jesus, despite their limitations, personally chose them and sent them and thus made them apostles. From the margins of poverty in fact and in spirit, He brought them to the center of His story for them to continue in deed and writing the very Gospel we now enjoy.

This is a great lesson for us Christians today. We who often complain of our limits and inadequacies, seeing ourselves more of victims than opportunities must face a greater reality. When we allow ourselves to listen as Jesus calls us to be sent we would realize that it is not our worth that matters but that the Master has made us worthy for His mission.

Simon the obscure has become the Rock in whom the Church is built, the primate among the princes now visible head of the Church. Paul whose mind was blinded by his ideas has become the light that brought the Gospel to far recesses of the world. It is only in the hands of God that we come who we were meant to be.

Happy Solemnity!

Beyond Comfortable

Lent, with its 40 days observance, is a commemoration of Jesus' own experience of being led out by the Spirit into the desert. The experience of being led out, inspired, or moved by the Spirit to go away from the comforts of home into the wilderness is the same for every Christian this Lent.

The mention of home is not just a metaphor to family and the house where you grew up in. I believe this home is something deeper and more encompassing than familial relationships or the domicile. Home for me is everything in your existence that makes you comfortable and at ease. Be they bonds of relationships, physical comforts, financial security, emotional stability, intellectual achievement, everything that brings about security in your existence is your home.

And Jesus is inviting us to go out of our homes, to leave that place of security, and into the unknown, into insecurity and discomfort. He challenges us this Lenten season to go out of our shells, naked and vulnerable, out into the open in order to see for ourselves the horizons blocked out by eyes already at ease with comfort. It is in the limits of the wilderness that you see how small your world has been and this opens you up to real growth.

We do not physically leave our houses to venture into forests and live with wildlife. No, we venture into living life with better set of behaviors, more pronounced and lively outlook, and a stronger will to do and stay good. Perhaps there are bad habits that need to be broken and good ones that need to gain traction. Perhaps there are relationships that have turned either stale or sour that needs to be reinvigorated or repaired. Perhaps the will to live and fully experience life has waned through time and test and one needs to revisit the core of one's existence.

Even more, it is an invitation to leave the lethargy in spiritual battle and charge out into the front lines. To face one's inner demons and point out the very weaknesses that has kept one from standing up again. It is a call to courageous admission of one's imperfections, and facing them squarely vow to accept them and improve on them. It is a call to remove sin from one's internal life and proceed on to live at peace with God.

The deepest call of Lent perhaps is for us to examine our love for God, how it is lived and expressed towards Him and our neighbors. It is a call to revisit those instances in our lives when we were truly touched by the Spirit and have met God in the inner locus of our being. It is a call to go back there without the distraction of the comforts of the world or the rest of creation, our persons bare, naked, and vulnerable before God.

Yes, Lent for me is that time to go out into the open. To be see and be seen naked by oneself and God, with all the imperfections and all the potential. For it is in the wilderness of discomfort that we begin to see the truth and in truth we find freedom and growth.

All these may remain to be words unless we take up the challenge. Can I challenge myself to love more each day the persons I already love and begin to love those I find difficult to love? Can I challenge myself to break bad habits and form new good ones? Can I challenge myself know better Christ that I may love him better? The list goes on and on.

But Lent begins with the single challenge to challenge, to have a strong resolve and will, to be led out by the Spirit into the open, not alone, but sharing in the same challenge with Jesus.

Stories of Coming Home

This morning I was blessed to read a testimony of a convert to the Catholic Faith. I respect our protestant brothers and sisters who devoutly keep their faith ,while at the same time, I feel blessed to be born into the Catholic Faith. A phrase that really got into me from the testimony is the assertion that some who are born as Catholics need to understand and love their faith deeper than they do now because converts from Protestantism, in immersing themselves into the richness of Truth in the Church, put to them to shame in their complacency.

There is the question of sola scriptura, sola fide, works, and grace in the article and the question begs, "What can save man?" Is it by scripture alone, or faith alone, or works, or grace? Protestants have long taught that scripture alone holds authority and faith alone brings salvation. Catholic Catechism I have read taught me that it is a triumvirate of faith, work, and God's grace.

Allow me to bring you along my train of thoughts...

Adhering to my Faith, I believe that God's grace prompts us to have faith in Jesus and gives us strength to do good works. Our faith is the root of our works while our works will not be enough without faith. We need to do both otherwise we fall into error. Yet it is not enough still, for it is not by power of man that man saves himself.

And this brings me to a dilemma. Can I then ask God to give give me grace that I may be saved? Would my asking be from my own strength or is it still grace coming from God? I remember St Paul saying that everything is Grace. I would opine that even the act of seeking redemption is grace. But then, philosophizing about it, if it is by grace that I seek redemption, why is it that not all men seek redemption? Does God play favorites with His grace?

Now I feel I am in dangerous waters. I must be missing something... and yes, there is something wrong in how I understand God's grace.

God by nature is all-Benevolent. He lavish with His Grace and He showers it on everyone and everything there is. I would go on to say that the universe is immersed in God's grace. Since it is the will of God that every man be saved, then everything must be working hard to ensure man's salvation. The universe and all that is in it has been sweating it out to guide us to salvation.

Isn't it that the stars have been faithful enough to shine every night that our wonder may be aroused and we may ask who made them? Isn't it that the warmth of the sun, the cool breeze, the verdant lush all speak of beauty and intricate design that brings us back to God? Isn't the phenomenon of life an outstanding breakaway from an infinite statistical improbability in a universe of entropy? Yes, everything has been grace. My life, my history, my person, and my being have all been grace that were given that I might find Him.

Going back to the question of why not all men are seeking redemption, I discover that each man does and years for God. The question of happiness, its search, and man's perennial failure and retry to find it is indicative that he is looking for something, or someone. And here, I see a play between Divine Will and Human will.

While Grace has been at work all along, in the foreground and background, consciously or unconsciously to man, the choice of redemption is all up to man. God patiently waits for man. He inspires him, He bombards him with beauty, goodness, and knowledge, and in His power orchestrates the universe to play music, and He waits for man to join in singing. He does not force, he inspires.

However, the human condition is complex.

Each one of us has a story, has his own interior life, his own person and character. The beautiful thing is, God deals with us individually, as if we are the only one left to be saved in the universe.

And so we get different responses. Some easily open up and say yes to God's invitation. Some take a lot of prodding. And some are still trapped in their human condition still waiting for a spark of light.

Back with the triumvirate of Grace, faith, and work, I see the primacy of God's grace in human redemption. It is not by man's power that man is saved but by God. In the question of sola scriptura, there is a need to ask if God's grace can only be found in and limited to scripture. In the teaching of sola fide, there is a need to ask if man's faith is equal to God's grace. In the idea of working our way to heaven, there is a need to ask if we all have the energy to finish such work.

We need to discover the graces that God has peppered into our existence that we may be saved. It could be the Communion within the Church, the Sacraments, our loved ones, our daily tasks, or even this internet connection we now enjoy. It is the ultimate generosity and love of God that saves.

There is so much to discover. There is so much to treasure.

Such is the love of God - unmerited and lavish.

A Higher Call for Extra-ordinarili-ness

First, what was that word?

We often quote St John Bosco on the popular slogan among Bosconians, "Do your ordinary duties extraordinarily well". The sentence is engraved in every Bosconian's heart and soul but interestingly, the phrase is not original of Don Bosco but is often said by him.

For most of us, it means putting our best foot forward in everything that we do. That is how the sons of Don Bosco became known to be talented and skilled people. Most Salesians would explain it that way and I have grown up understanding it that way. For most, our human effort of turning the ordinary into extra-ordinary is truly sanctifying for such good, or would I say best, works are pleasing to God's eyes.

In an ordinary breakfast, Fr Fidel and I were happily discussing the aspirants' schedule of the day, to do's, chores and work until the conversation ended up here. He gave me a strong argument to challenge the common understanding of the saying.

The phrase could also mean that, in a higher perspective, those who are in God's grace are given the power to do things extra-ordinarily beyond the level of what they normally can. It is no longer us who does the extra-ordinary, putting a notch higher the mundane things we do, but it is God who empowers us to do much more than what we possibly can.

It was the little Johnny Bosco of Becchi who stunned the world. A humble peasant from an obscure village in northern Italy rose to become an influential figure in the Church and state, rightly earning during his time the title "living saint". A boy who received not the best of education became one of the best educators. St John Bosco's story of success is a powerful testament to the grace of God who lifts up the humble from their lowliness to seat them with kings and nobles.

Now back to the saying. Can we then say that the saying is a higher and stronger challenge to stay in the grace of God which empower us to transcend our normality towards the extra-ordinary? This is something more theologically sound since it is not by man's effort that he sanctifies himself but through the generous and unmerited love of God.

Should we accept this paradigm shift, then Don Bosco must have asked for his sons and daughters to stay in the grace of God always, that they may witness to the "normal" world the extra-ordinariness of God. When we have followed his advice of frequent Confession and Communion, a spiritual director and confessor by our side, and a real friendship with Jesus and Mary, then we can stay in God's grace. And the extra boost of extra-ordinarili-ness will come not just from our own effort but also from the empowering love of God.