Unburying the Talent
The seminarian that lived down the hall from me during my first year of formation for the priesthood was a gentle soul. Quiet. Kind. One of those people we often encounter who never make life all about themselves.
Shortly after our return from Christmas break, though, I saw a change in Greg. He was withdrawn and tired-looking. He stopped attending seminary gatherings; even his attendance at chapel was hit-or-miss. Some of us were worried and we said as much; he brushed off those concerns. “Everything’s fine,” he’d always claim. We knew he was lying.
I have my suspicions as to what was troubling him. He would drop hints from time to time in conversations as we walked to class or made a Wawa run during our free-time. One day, emboldened by the Spirit, I simply said to Greg: “Hey, don’t be afraid to talk it out with someone you trust.”
Fast forward a few months later to the end of the semester. Greg was packing his room as we were all required to do in May, but you instantly knew from how he was packing that Greg would not be coming back in the Fall. “I got my answers,” he said, “and I finally have peace.”
I asked him what changed from Christmas break until now. His response was powerful, one that I have never forgotten, and one that I try to share with anyone who comes my way seeking direction when the cross is heavy or the way forward uncertain. Greg told me: “There were things I kept trying to bury in fear but I never found the true freedom I was searching for.”
Simply put: Buried fear never sets us free to become who God created us to be.
That in the end is at the heart of this Gospel passage about the buried talent (Matt 25:14-30). Let’s be real: Jesus is not looking for increased profits or amazing success with what we have been given. It’s certainly nice if that happens, but it’s not the end-goal – not for God.
His desire for us actually comes from the response of the servant who buried his one talent. He told the Master: “You are demanding, so out of fear, I buried what you gave me. Here, you can have it back.”
How sad is it that so many of us go back to God at the end of our life’s journey chained by fear, no different than we were when we were 13 or 25 or whatever age it was when we decided to bury a part of ourselves or all of our hearts, quite frankly. This is not what God desires for us.
He weeps knowing that we live under the weight of others’ harmful and self-centered expectations; that we wear masks to hide and become something we were never meant to be; that we decide it’s better to ignore or avoid the fear instead of being fully and beautifully alive, even with our wounds.
The Lord understands, of course. He, too, was crushed under the weight of temptation and emotion. He knew pain and sorrow, and even in the garden on the night before he died, he asked for the Cup of Suffering to pass. He could have tried to bury it all. Instead, he faced it head-on, even if it meant Calvary.
As a priest now for six years, I continue to be humbled and amazed by the men and women who remind me what it is like once we decide to unbury the talent and let go of the fear:
A few years back, I witnessed the marriage of a young woman who wrestled with a serious drug addiction for most of her 20s. To the rest of the world, she seemingly had it all. Underneath the surface, however, she was dying inside. One day, she walked into NA and asked for help. She started to unbury the fear of needing to look at her pain.
I have listened to the stories of young men (and not so young) who daily battle an addiction to pornography, some of whom have gone so far as to seek professional counseling or, at the very least, get rid of the iPhone that provides the means for such easy temptation. They have said “no more” and unburied the fear of having to face the sin.
Beautiful, too, are the moments in which the Sacrament of Confession and a return to Church has brought about the removal of the masks we often place upon ourselves to pretend to be someone we’re not. How moved God must be when we have the tough conversations that need to be had; when we offer mercy to another instead of a cold shoulder (our first instinct); and when we choose sacrifice over selfishness … all because we choose to unbury the talent.
The question that we really need to bring to Eucharist this week is this: what are we still wanting to hide from God and from ourselves? How are we remaining in fear like the one-talent servant?
I sat with almost ex-seminarian Greg for a bit that last afternoon as he packed, knowing he was moving on in life; that our paths may never cross again. I asked him about the change, the freedom he found. In a way, he had now become the 5-talent servant who just increased his fortune.
“I talked things out with a priest-counselor I trusted,” he said, “and I spent a lot of time in Adoration trying to figure it all out and let Christ speak to my heart.”
For those who may not know, or have only experienced brief moments with this beautiful Church devotion, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is an opportunity to spend time with the Lord truly present in the consecrated Host, and placed on display in a monstrance for times of praise, thanksgiving and supplication. To think that the God of all Creation chooses to humble Himself in order to remain with us in dedicated times outside of Mass is astounding.
But isn’t that always the way? The greatest acts of love often come to us in very humble and quiet ways. God most often comes in the whisper, not the thunderclap; in the breeze, not the hurricane.
Greg found the way forward through time with Christ in Adoration. By sitting before Him – even when it was difficult and seemed as though nothing was happening – he was being broken open to mercy and grace, to healing and courage, to holiness and to finding his true self. The one God made Greg to be.
Greg found love by sitting before Love, and in so doing was able to love genuinely, from the heart. Authentically without any masks. Greg began to reflect Christ because by spending time with Him, he took on his Best Friend’s most beautiful gifts: wholeness and freedom. No more burying of oneself. No more fear.
The great Catholic activist of the last century Dorothy Day (one of my heroes) worked with a gentleman by the name of Peter Maurin, a radical quirky man who dreamed big and “didn’t give a damn” what others thought of him, in order to found the Catholic Worker. Maurin once offered this reflection, and it has stayed with me ever since Greg first shared it with me as he was packing to leave. Maurin wrote (paraphrased): “Sometimes it seems like the Catholic Church has been given dynamite that it has chosen to seal-up, afraid to open and blast through the rock of sin and fear and hate.”
Imagine if we as Church blew the lid off this greatest gift of Our Lord’s True Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament, present in monstrances and tabernacles present throughout the world. What if we called others back to the Love that waits for us in chapels and cathedrals in every corner of the world? What if we pointed the way again to living without fear, never again burying the talents?
What if, like Greg, we finally found our true selves by coming before the One who has chosen in love to stay with us in our joys and sorrows until the end of time? What if we simply came before God and said “I’m here? Help me. I love You.”
Just imagine the revolution that would begin …