“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!"

 

“Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.” These are the words that we hear in the Gospel today as Jesus tells his disciples the parable of the talents. A master, who was on his way to a journey, entrusted his possessions to his three servants—each according to their ability. The first received 5 talents, the second one received 2 talents, and a third one received 1 talent. But because two of them were faith and good servants, they went out and multiplied the talents, while the last one did nothing. Upon the return of the Master, each servant came to him to settled accounts, but because the first two had multiplied their talents, the master welcomes them to share of the master’s joy. To the last one, however, the master reprimands him for not doing anything with the talents given to him for he was a lazy servant. This parable is taken from the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus is talking about the end of times. And we can easily see the importance of this parable. The master going on a journey is Jesus who will eventually come back, while the servants represent all of us. However, each one of us have been given different talents by God and it is our duty to take them and multiplied them. It is our duty to use them for the good of others, to use them for the good of the community. We must use our own gifts so when Jesus returns again, he can say to us, “well done, my good and faithful servant. Come and share your master’s joy.” If we do nothing with those gifts and just bury them, we will not receive the eternal reward.  We do not have to look far to see this. How many people in the world today have rejected the gifts given to them by God and have misused them or hidden them? Many of them simply reject those gifts, while some other simply reject the master all together. But to live a life like this is of complete misery and of emptiness. 

 

A man who understood this well and who rejected the gifts of God for so long was St. Augustine, whose memorial we celebrate today. St. Augustine was like the lazy servant who wanted to do nothing with the master, who wanted to hide his talents to life a life of debauchery and egotism. His happiness was simply found in the wrong things. But when he finally stopped rejecting the Master and his talents, St. Augustine converted and even became a bishop of the Church. His talents were so important that his teachings were the doctrine of the Church for a long time. His teachings were so essential that later he became a doctor of the church. But Augustine knew and understood that his conversation meant exactly what he was looking for in the world, for he writes, “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.” 

 

And I believe this is the lesson we must learn today.  God is constantly looking for us and reaching for us. He is waiting for us to accept the talents He has given us so we can transform and sanctified the world. If God can transform the heart of a man like St. Augustine, he can transform our hearts too. God takes whatever we offer him, and molds it into something magnificent. It does not matter if we take a short time or a long time for us to accept Him and begin multiplying what He has given us. What matters is that we listen to Him, we find Him, we accept Him, and we transform our lives in a way that we can say we belong completely to Him. This is so when the time comes and we close our eyes to this life, He can tell us, ““well done, my good and faithful servant. Come and share your master’s joy.”