By Fr. Roy Cimagala
THIS is what we can draw from that parable about a nobleman who had to make a journey to obtain his kingship and called his 10 servants, giving them 10 gold coins, telling them to engage in trade till he would return. (Lk 19,11-28) As the gospel also said, the parable was meant to teach his disciples to make good use of time, avoiding the thought that the Kingdom of God would soon or even immediately appear.
We are familiar with how this parable would unfold. And the clear lesson it was meant to impart on us is that we too should make good use of our time and our God-given talents while we are still in this this world. We actually do not know when the end of time would come, and so we should not waste time speculating on it.
We should just “engage in trade” as the parable would put it. In that regard, let us do our best to make the most out of what God has given us. If we truly love God and everybody else, with a love that is nothing less than a participation of the love God has for us and as commanded by Christ to us, then we will never say enough in our self-giving.
Even if such attitude would already seem to be going beyond common sense, our reason and other human and worldly standards that we usually use to measure our love, we would still go on giving ourselves, never saying enough. We would just give and give, even if we seem to consume ourselves till death.
This is, of course, an overwhelming prospect, but that is what true love is. It is some kind of madness that knows no limits. It is given without measure, without cost, without any calculation.
And even if such total self-giving is not reciprocated, it would still go on loving. It is purely gratuitous. Even more, even if it is not only unreciprocated but is also violently resisted and rejected, it would still go on loving.
It’s indeed laudable that in whatever we do, we try to give it our best shot. We should just remember that our best will never be enough insofar as pleasing God and everybody else is concerned. Our best can always be made better.
This should not surprise us, much less, cause us to worry. But we should acknowledge it so that we avoid getting self-satisfied with what we have done and then fall into self-complacency. That’s when we stop growing and improving as a human person and as a child of God.
We have to remember that we are meant for the infinite, for the spiritual and the supernatural. That’s a goal that we can never fully reach in our life here on earth. But we are meant to keep on trying.
What can keep us going in this regard is certainly not our own effort alone, much less our desire and ambition for fame, power or wealth. It’s not pride or some form of obsessions. These have a short prescription period. A ceiling is always set above them. In time, we will realize that everything we have done was just “vanity of vanities.”
It is God’s grace that would do the trick. It’s when we correspond sincerely to God’s love for us that we get a self-perpetuating energy to do our best in any given moment. It’s when we can manage to do the impossible.
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
