Continuing from Gift of Faith:
(Part 1 was posted yesterday . . .)

If certain situations make you feel tense, it means that your talent is hidden within them, as if a diamond were buried beneath the ashes.  What do you do with it?  How do you make use of it?  Everything is meant to serve towards your sanctification.  In this sense, everything is grace.  Suffering, which overwhelms you or other unfavourable circumstances, is a whole mess of talents.  We, however, are often like blind people or like children who understand very little.  It is only when we stand before God that everything will be made clear to us.  Then we will see the ocean of talents in which we have been immersed.
     There are two kinds of talents: those that are less precious and those that are more precious.  If you are successful, if something comes out right for you–this is certainly a talent.  If however, nothings turns out right–this is a more precious talent.  Failures are the priceless treasures given to you in your life. Just like the master in the Gospel who returned from his travels and demanded an account from his servants, God will someday ask you, how did you make use of your personal failures, which He gave you as an opportunity, as a talent.  Sometimes there are many failures in your life–do you make use of them?

     The parable of the talents is an evangelical call to conversion.  You have to start looking at your life differently; you must look at it with the eyes of faith.  Then you will see God’s endless giving of grace; you will see your whole life as a multitude of hidden chances for continual inner transformation.  You will come to know that everything is grace.  It seems that God, granting you difficult graces, is forcing His gifts into your hands, but you resist and do not want to accept them. Yet, difficult graces are the most valuable talents of your life. Sometimes there are many of them because God wants you to have enough talents to make use of.

To be continued . . .