Use Your Gifts
Saturday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time Scriptural Readings: 1 Thessalonians 4:9-11; Psalm 98:1, 7-8, 9; Matthew 25:14-30
My dear encountered couples:
“The poor get poorer and the rich get richer.” We’ve all heard that before. And Jesus seems to be agreeing to that statement when he says, “Those who have will get more until they grow rich, while those who have not will lose even the little they have.” Doesn’t sound exactly fair, does it?
Jesus is talking about reaping the rewards of work. Those who do something and keep at it will usually end up with more than they started out with. Those who sit around and wait to hear that they won the sweepstakes usually discover that they no longer even have the dollar they paid for the ticket. And Jesus is especially emphasizing this in regard to the gifts that God gives us. Use them and they increase; let them go to waste and they diminish.
We all know this. The person who uses his God-given muscle strength to lift and carry becomes stronger. The person whose muscles are limited to pressing the remote control switch for his TV set grows weaker. It’s the same with those who think as well as with those who act. Use your mind to work out problems and it gets sharper; don’t use it and it grows duller.
The Christian who prays and believes, and does something when he can as a result of that praying and believing, grows in goodness and holiness. The one who merely prays and waits, when he could be doing something, might lose his faith and even eventually stop praying. Use your gifts.
