St. Volodymyr's Parish

Sunday Gospel Matt. 25, 14-30

"Who has ears to hear, let him hear” - with these words today’s Gospel ends, with these words Christ appeals to those people who listened this parable then and also to each of us who listened to it today.

Why did Jesus draw our attention to it? We have ears to be able to listen. But, unfortunately, very often we don’t use them. We can't help but hearing, we hear everything that happens around us, but unfortunately we don’t hear the important things that concern our lives. That is why Christ reminds us that if we have ears, we have them to hear and keep the Word of God saying to us.

We heard the parable about the talents. Christ compared the Heavenly Kingdom to one man, who was going on a journey and gave servants some parts of his property. He gave each of them an amount, one got more, another less, as Jesus said "each [received] according to his ability”. Let’s look, at what each of these servants did with what he received from his master. We can see, that the first and second servants worked, putted these money into some businesses and before their master came back they doubled this amount. But the third servant went and dug it into ground, so that nothing happened to it. And when the master came back this servant returned him his talent, and the master said: "You wicked and slothful servant”. Why did the master say so in this manner?

I think, that when the master went out he gave to each servant something according to his capabilities. The master knew, how each servant can work to bring some fruits. That’s why he gave to one servant five talents, to second two talents and to third one just one talent. He gave these talents with a hope that they will work. But we can see that the third servant was lazy and found an excuse, that his master can punish him if something happened with that talent. And the master said: "On your mouth I judge you. You knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and gather where I have not winnowed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest.”

And now let us look into our lives… Very often, when we hear this parable, we understand that we have different talents, different ability, and different skills. One has more, another less; someone has skills to one thing, someone has talents to another thing. We use them (talents) for ourselves, and also, I hope, to serve other people. I think, that none of us can deny that to develop and improve our talents we should work on them. If athletes do not train every day, they would not break the record, if someone is not constantly learning and improving in their profession, they will not achieve a good position, if we do not work every day on our talents, we never develop them.

But every one of us, as a Christian, has something very important. In the Holy Mystery of Baptism each of us became the child of God and received His grace. What do we do with it? What we do with our filiation (the fact of being the child of a particular parent or parents), with our faith, with our life in God? Do we work on ourselves to be better, to be close to God, to improve and strengthen our faith? Or, maybe we are like this third servant and dig everything that we received from God in a hole, cover it and forget about it? I think every of us could give an answer for this questing to ourselves…

By this parable Christ calls every of us to not bury what He gives us. And He grants us so much… not just physical talents and skills (which are granted us not just for our good, but for service to others), but also all these graces and benefits that He grants us. Christ calls us to not hide all of these, but become better and develop all these gifts. By this parable Christ shows us how Heavenly Kingdom will look like… God’s filiation is granted us to be participants of God’s Kingdom, God’s life. And if we neglect this filiation, don’t nurture our faith, what we are expecting when the Master will come and ask: "what happened with that I granted you”?

That’s why I would like to wish to each of us to develop all these graces, gifts, talents which we received from God to serve Him and our neighbours; to be closer to God not just sometime, but now and also sometime in the Heavenly Kingdom. Amen.

Fr. Andriy Mykytyuk