I kept it stored away in a handkerchief,
for I was afraid of you, because you are a demanding man;
you take up what you did not lay down
and you harvest what you did not plant.
We all receive gifts from God. "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good" (see First Corinthians 12:7). But if we're honest we must admit that we often stifle our gifts out of fear. We place the light under a bushel basket so that no one notices. We imagine ourselves to be acting in humility. But in actuality it is a kind of reverse pride that assumes that our limits impose limits on what God can do through us.
Whether we have been given gifts is not the question. The question is rather what are they and what are we doing with them. The LORD even assures us that it is OK to start small, as long as we start at all.
why did you not put my money in a bank?
Then on my return I would have collected it with interest.
To the degree that we rely on ourselves and have any kind of realistic appraisal of the situation we will be tempted to hide our light and to bury our gifts. The Kingdom will not be built until we choose to trust God and act from faith in him rather than fear about ourselves. It isn't that we will suddenly experience profound competence as investors, sure of our ability to get results. It is rather that we know that God himself gives us the ability we need. We can trust that we have it even when we cannot feel it. This means that we may be surprised to discover gifts we didn't think we had.
One such gift we are given is the ability to enter profoundly and deeply into worship. We can do this even if we don't know how. We can do it even if it doesn't feel like we can do it. It isn't something we can or should work up in ourselves. We are, rather, invited to enter in.
"Come up here and I will show you what must happen afterwards."
At once I was caught up in spirit.
A great treasure we are given is the mass, with the Word proclaimed and the Eucharist received. This is God giving us himself, literally of infinite value, far more than any coin. As he does so we can respond by being fully, actively, consciously present as he does so. We recognize that we are in heaven surrounded by angels. We do not worship alone or even just in our local church building. It is a cosmic unity of creation receiving itself from the creator and offering all of itself back to him.
Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks
to the one who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever,
the twenty-four elders fall down
before the one who sits on the throne
and worship him, who lives forever and ever.
They throw down their crowns before the throne, exclaiming:
"Worthy are you, Lord our God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things;
because of your will they came to be and were created."
Worship is just one gift of many that each of us have been given. Let us listen to God in the manifold ways he speaks to us, including through his Word and through our brothers and sisters, in order that we might discover all of the rich ways in which we have been gifted. Let us not fear to put those gifts to use.
Let everything that has breath
praise the LORD! Alleluia.
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