Reflection
There are a great many things I have been loath to part with. Some of them I was right to want; none of them were ever really mine. Everything I have ever had has been given to me. How many of these gifts have been ill-used? How many times have I said to God: out of fear, I buried what you gave to me?
Fear runs through all of today’s readings. Proverbs praises the woman who fears the Lord, whose hands are always stretched out in service or to the poor. The Psalm calls us blessed if we fear the Lord and promises we will eat the fruit of our own work. Then the Gospel shows us a man who is also afraid, and who would not spend what he was given for fear of losing it.
St. Thomas Aquinas names two kinds of fear. The first, servile fear, comes from the love of self; it dreads punishment and harm. Filial fear comes from love of God, and what it dreads is separation from the beloved (Aquinas ST II-II, q.19, a.6). The third servant in the Gospel had the first kind. He was not afraid of losing his master, he was afraid of what losing the talent would cost him.
What we hide away decays where we leave it. Intelligence kept to ourselves, never taught or shared, becomes pride. Money kept becomes greed. Love kept to ourselves becomes selfishness. A heart too timid to love is not safe, it is a heart incapable of love—a heart wasted. When the Master asks why the servant did not at least put the talent in the bank, he is pointing at something obvious: the talent spent badly would only have been lost, but the talent that was buried was wasted. It was not spent, invested, or even given away.
The remedy, it seems, is to love, to act, to use what God gives us without counting the cost to ourselves.
Venerable Fulton Sheen called this “wasting ourselves”—pouring out everything we have for others in love. Most of us measure what we give, and pour it out slowly, as if the slowness showed how much it costs us. Not those who truly love. When David’s men risked their lives to bring him water, he poured it on the ground as an offering to God. The woman at Bethany did not measure her perfume but crushed the jar over the feet of our Lord.
Those who love most do not ration, and are not afraid of wasting what was freely given to them.
-Ven. Fulton Sheen, Wasting Your Life; C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
“The reason for loving God is God Himself; the measure is to love without measure.” (St. Bernard, De diligendo Deo I.1) Fear can paralyze us, or it can inspire us to act. We are called to a filial fear of the Lord—the fear a child would have of losing their father—and that fear should produce a love that counts no cost. Where might we let love cast out our fear of loss?
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