The parable of the talents (Matthew: 25, 14-30) is a very beautiful and involving passage for a communitarian lectio divina. It opens us to a wise and spiritual vision of our apostolic service; it unveils the richness of the diversity and specificity of every person, as well as it co-operates with the cause of the Kingdom; it reveals the sense of history, of the world, of man made to the image and similitude of God. Today, particularly, we need to discover the high and deep sense of every human life; in the religious life itself we feel strongly the exigency of re-motivating our choice of the one we want "to follow" and "to serve".

In the Gospel of Matthew, the parable of the talents is between the parable of the ten virgins (Mt 25,1-13) and the passage of the final judgement (Mt 25,31-46). The complete 25^th chapter clarifies our concept about the time of the coming of the Kingdom and brings to evidence how the idea we have of God is a dimension that mostly influences our life and choices. It is the matter of a false image of God, which isolates the human being, kills the community, forbids us to live in joy and impoverishes our life.

The parable of the ten virgins insists on vigilance: the Kingdom of God may come any moment. The parable of talents lingers on the growth of the Kingdom: it grows when we use the gifts that we receive to serve others. The passage of the final judgement teaches us how to enter the Kingdom: we enter it if we welcome "the little ones".

We can subdivide the parable of the talents into three points: a past, in which we received the gifts; a present, in which we must make them to bear fruit; a future, in which we shall have to give an account of how we have used them in life.

During this reflection, we shall linger on some of the multiple aspects that the parable of talents brings to light: the owner turns his servants into friends and entrusts his properties to them; the richness of diversity is a good for all men and women; we must return to God the received talents along with their fruit.

This parable opens the heart to the sense of a full life in our hands as a gift from God-Creator. He who thought of us and called us to existence entrusts his talents to us for the good of our brothers and sisters. Behind the image of talents, there is the sum of all the gifts of grace that the Lord has poured on us. The "money of the owner", the goods of the Kingdom are: love, service, sharing, free gift; talent is all that favours the growth of the community and reveals the presence of God. If we shut up ourselves for the fear of losing the little we possess, we really lose it, because love dies, justice weakens, sharing disappears. On the contrary, the man who does not think of himself and gives up himself to others, grows and surprisingly receives all that he has given up and even much more. "Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it" (Mt 10, 39).

The parable highlights particularly the free and freeing relation of the owner with his servants, "In fact, it will be like a man who, leaving for a journey, called his servants and handed over his goods to them". This is not only a relation of trust, but also of full sharing that chases away every exclusive action of power and dominion. The Lord associates with himself co-creators in the world, which He entrusts to us, as responsibly active persons in the building of the true Kingdom of God, namely the divine presence in history. This is the call to a new life.

The distribution of goods to the servants leads us back to a deeper meaning that gives sense to the work of man associated with the work of God, who offers us the high perspective of collaborating with His project in history, so that it may reveal to the world the beauty of His work and the love for every creature.

The criteria followed by the owner in distributing his goods could cause agitation in the unionists and defenders of justice; it could also arouse, in the one who reads it, confusion and the need to catch the reason of such a glaring treatment as this. It is difficult to accept these criteria without a change of mentality: the good entrusted to us are distributed in a different way, not according to a generic and anonymous equality, but as personal and loving differentiation at the basis of the owner’s choices.

The diversity does not bring to evidence only our limits, but highlights also the specificity of every person in the space of love that God offers to each person. Only like this, the diversity becomes reciprocal richness; if it is not like this, the diversity becomes a space of division and accusation, of envy and robbery, of violence and death. ¹

We can say that, in reality, the talents are not qualities or goods given to us so that we may multiply them; they are the oil of the passage in the previous parable of the ten virgins, as well as the love of the poor in the following passage of the final judgement. The talent is the love that the Father has for me, a love that must "duplicate itself" in my loving answer to the brothers. The answer to this love makes me what I am, equal son of the Father.

The parable shows that, in front of the diversity of the received gift, there is one who makes all he owns to bear fruit and the one who hides the little he has. Jesus does not accept the attitude of the servant who buries his one talent. The sterility that mortifies the expansion of love in the person and in the community opposes the growth of the Kingdom, and not the little we have.

Our Lord Jesus nailed on the cross and then ascended to heaven, has not left us alone: He has given us His Spirit and waits for us to love Him, because by loving Him we realise our identity. The talent is the gift of the received love and our love for Him in the poor is the talent that we are called to earn. This is the only way to enter, as children, the glory of his and our Father. ² Therefore, the parable solicits us to a wise and active vigilance; he who does not invest his talent will lose it. Often the cause of failure is the false image we have of God; if we consider Him strict and exigent our relation with Him cannot be a relation of love, but a legalistic, fearful and sterile one.

To invest the received gifts, to see that they may bear fruit, puts us in the current of the Trinitarian love at the basis of every personal growth and the building up of a Christian community. The attitude of the servant who has buried his talent for fear of his master, expresses a situation that we can easily find also in the religious life. I think of a possible institutional paralysis, when we do not dare take some risk; I think also of a diffused spiritual inertia justified by fears, resistances, contrasts at personal and communitarian level, or motivated by socio-psychological conditions, which we encounter in our daily life.

Sterility is an antichristian category. Laziness and disengagement are unacceptable attitudes before the gift of faith and the consequent missionary responsibility of proclaiming the Gospel. Every baptised person must enter in synergy with the Holy Spirit so that the light, the salt and the necessary leaven will not be missing to safeguard the human family in solidarity and communion.

We can compare the community life to a bank where we can invest our talents; where the different distribution of gifts is welcomed not as a measure of more or less personal prestige, but as recognition of a wise complementarity of charisma for the growth of common good. The parable of talents is the parable of creativity in the community and liberality of the love that we are called to live as "workers of the Lord’s vineyard".

To be keepers of the Word in the fear of risks or lack of initiatives is not enough; the gift of faith binds the Christians to be, above all, enterprising and generous promoters of the Gospel and the goods of salvation. Paul VI left a severe warning for those who do not invest the talent-gift of faith, "He who neglects the missionary mandate of proclaiming Jesus Christ, risks even his own personal salvation and the survival of the communities" (EN 80).