Dear Saints,

This week’s parable of the talents is widely misunderstood, largely because people read contemporary definitions into it. In Jesus’s time, “talent” was not an innate aptitude but rather a measurement of weight. One talent might be something like a modern day gold bar, but twice as heavy - as much as 50 pounds. His original audience would have immediately been struck by the heft of each servant’s share of the owner’s possessions, and would have understood that the story was a reference to the weightiest thing of all: participation in God’s own life.

The question, then, is not how much you have been given (even an ounce of heaven is enough), but what you do with it. Those who, having received God’s love and mercy, essentially hoard it for themselves have no place in his kingdom. By contrast, those who share it - those who give themselves away entirely by investing in others with charity and forgiveness - will experience an ever greater share in his life, until at last they hear the words for which every human heart was made: “Come, share your master’s joy.”

Father Daniel

δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ