The parable of the talents is a judgment parable that forces us to ask ourselves: "What are the talents God has given me and how have I been using them?" Read the article "The Christian Life as a Shared-Project" and use the following as your guide.
1. The gospel speaks of talents that were distributed to servants each according to their abilities, thus one received five, another two and the last, one. Whatever the amount given to each servant, all of them were expected to give back some profit for the talents given them.
Exercise: Try to make an inventory of the "talents" you have.
Reflect: How have you invested your talents? Are the profits deriving from your investment something that you can give back to the one who entrusted to you those talents?
2. The servant who kept the talents entrusted to in a hole, had a pretense when accounting day came: he was afraid of his owner whom he saw as an exacting, dishonest taskmaster. But the issue is not really how the servant regards his master but what he did with what was entrusted to him. The truth the servant acted in a way that was not in keeping with the trust given to him.
Exercise: Go back to your list of talents. Which of these have you not yet put into service? Why? Is it because of "fear" (e.g. human respect)
3. What the master said when he ordered that the one uninvested talent be given to the one who has doubled his five talents may sound unjust: "To those who already have, more will be given; from those who have not, whatever they have will be taken away." When we reflect on it, however, it isn't that strange: a talent that is invested (e.g. a talent in mustic or the arts) actually grows and develops.
Exercise: Go back to the list of talents you have made. Which of these have become developed? Wouldn't you think that the mere development of those talents have added to what you are as a human being as some kind of "personal ornament" that you will always have with you?
Augustine says that we are God's gifts to ourselves, but what we make of ourselves, is our gift to God. Understood from within the Parable of the Talents, it would appear that even our gifts to God is an ornament that God "decorates" us with. After all, we cannot add to God, so what we give Him is something that we actually add to ourselves.
