God made you to be happy with him forever.
And God made everything else to help you find your way to that happiness. Learning how to use everything this world offers as a way to grow in friendship with God is the greatest earthly wisdom we can achieve. And learning how to put aside any earthly good that gets in the way of our friendship with God is also true wisdom.
In today’s Gospel, the two servants who invested the talents they received showed that they had a strong and trusting relationship with the master of the house. They were able to take a risk with what had been given to them, just as the master took a risk in giving them good things in the first place. And they used those good things for good.
The third servant didn’t really have a relationship with the master. All that one could see was the money, and out of fear of losing the money, took no risks and reaped no benefit. But worst of all, that one had not confidence or trust in the master – only fear. How can we be happy with God if we live only in fear of losing the good things he has given us?
Thanksgiving allows us to look beyond the gifts or talents we possess to the Giver who gave them to us in the first place. There are many things in the world to make us afraid, and many fearful things that happen. Yet even when earthly goods fail, God’s love does not fail.
St. Ignatius of Loyola called this dynamic the “Principle and Foundation”, a solid starting point in learning how to live a good life. God’s unfailing love is given to us even in the passing things of this world. David Fleming, SJ, summarizes the conclusion St. Ignatius draws from this principle: “We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one. For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God. Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening his life in me.”
At Thanksgiving, we are grateful to God for the things he has placed in our hands – and even those that seem to have fallen through our hands. We are not grateful to those things, but to God himself. May we find his love in everything, and in everything share his love with others, and his call to perfect happiness.
-Fr. Tom
