Be Gift and Grace for Others

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

Lord Jesus, help us acknowledge our gifts and talents and place them freely at the service of others. Amen.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters:

Do you remember Shel Silverstein’s parable The Giving Tree (Harper and Row Publishers, New York:1964)? “Once there was a tree”, it begins, “and she loved a little boy.” Regularly from the boy’s childhood to his teen years to his adulthood, he came to the tree. When he was a child, he came to climb her trunk, eat her apples and swing from her branches. And the tree was happy. As he matured, his requests for the tree’s particular gifts and talents became more insistent, more costly. First, when the boy needed money she gave her apples to sell, and she was happy. When he needed a home, she gave her branches; when he wanted to get away from it all, she happily gave her trunk for a boat. At long last, the boy who was an old man by now, came back to the tree, who was no more than an old stump. Since all the man wanted now was a place to sit and rest, the tree offered her stump to him. And the tree was happy.

Like Jesus in today’s Gospel (Mt 25:14-30), Silverstein told a parable that captured the essence of what it means to acknowledge our gifts and talents and to place them freely and fully at the service of others. Such generosity with oneself requires the type of risk-taking, that is exemplified in the first two servants in the parable of the talents. Each dared to risk investing all that had been entrusted him by his employer. Neither held back anything even though worldly prudence may have dictated for him to do so. From these risk-taking servants, and from the giving tree, we learn that all comes to us from God as a gift; therefore all should be given as gift, without judging the worthiness of the recipient and with full awareness that what we give may be misused, undervalued or even abused.

In contrast to the two daring servants and the utterly selfless tree, the third servant chose what he thought to be the safe path. He did not risk, he did not give, and in the end even that which had been entrusted to him was rescinded. So it goes with those who refuse to spend their God-given selves, their time, their talent or their treasure for the sake of the kingdom. These may, in the end retain what they have, but what good shall a treasure be that cannot traverse the final passage we know as death?

Today, the parable continues to speak its message, assuring us that we are both gifted and graced, and in that capacity we are to be both gift and grace for others…even if we are only an old stump where another can find rest.

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