I am rereading Fr. Dajczer’s book, The Gift of Faith–which I cannot recommend highly enough. When I first read his take on the parable of the talents it caused a major paradigm shift in my thinking, so I thought I would share him with you over the next few days. He prefaces his comments on the parable with a discussion of the nature of faith: faith is the ability to see everything with God’s eyes–“Every moment of our lives is permeated with the Presence that loves and bestows. To live in faith means to be able to see this loving and constantly bestowing Presence.”
So, on to the parable of the talents:
God waits for us to look with the eyes of faith at all the experiences we live through, especially the difficult ones. In the parable of the talents, Jesus warns us not to close ourselves off from coming to know Him through faith and not to be slothful in using all things which God is continuously giving us. . . . A talent is a gift and material, but at the same time an opportunity. Christ , in giving you a talent, trusts you and waits for you to take proper advantage of it. If He has given you certain abilities, then He is not indifferent as to what you do with them. And if, however, you did not receive these abilities–this is also a talent. A talent is not only receiving something, but it is also lacking something.
In the light of faith, the good health you have is a talent, but bad health is also a talent. Jesus in each case asks the question. What are you doing with this talent? You can equally waste good health, and even more so, you can waste the lack of health. …
It is a talent, for example, if you are unable to pray; yet you consider this a misfortune. It is important what you do with this inability to pray. Maybe you have buried this talent and you say to yourself: well, I will not pray. But you can gain so much from it. The inability to pray should intensify your hunger for God, and thereby it can become a means contributing to your sanctification.
The same thing applies when you have problems at home, when the family is quarreling, this also is your talent and an opportunity given to you by God. What can you do with it? If you break down, and are discouraged, then you bury it in the ground. It is not possible for a person of faith not to see the deeper meaning of his own experiences. The very search of the deeper understanding of personal experiences is to profit from the talent. If you experience fear, for example, you fear suffering or death–this is also an opportunity offered to you. . . .
To be continued . . .
Witnesses to Hope 
My daughters recently asked me what was the most difficult year of my almost 36 year marriage. My response was surprising to me. I said from 20 to 25 years. My reasons for this were the challenges I experienced during this time. My best friend and prayer partner had just died of breast cancer. My faith was challenged, my prayer life was challenged and most importantly my relationship with my husband was challenged. I couldn’t manufacture my feelings. They just were not there. My only prayer was, “Lord, give me your love. Change my heart.” I went through the motions with no feelings. It was lonely, isolating, scary to me, hurtful to my husband, and empty. I had to learn in profound ways to trust my God in the deepest part of who I am.
During that almost five years I lost my mother-in-law and 2 sisters-in-law to cancer and my husband lost his job and was unemployed for 11 months. I did not think I had anything to offer anybody. I did not really have any talents because in my eyes I was a complete failure at all my relationships. Some how in the depths of my soul I was able to keep the prayer, “Lord, give me your love. Change my heart.” at the center of myself.
My husband and I traveled to Canada for our 25th wedding anniversary trip. Believe me it was all moving forward on faith. There just were not any feelings to draw on from within me. Some time during that trip God began to change my heart. It wasn’t an all at once big revelation it was just a slow awareness that I was changed. We received an anniversary book as a gift and I found the quote from the 25th year by Mark Twain quite interesting.
“Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century”
Kathleen