NIES — Five, two and one

It can be a pain to be a kid sometimes.

I grew up with a lot of potential but had a very hard time turning it into results. My grades were poor, my friendships were fragile, and I didn’t want to help out at home.

Then — out of desperation, I think — someone read me Jesus’s Parable of the Talents.

You can find it in Matthew 25:14-30 and will hear it as part of the Gospel reading for Sunday, Nov. 15 of this year.

In that parable, Jesus tells of a demanding boss who gets ready to leave on a trip and puts three of his servants in charge of certain amounts of money, which are known as talents.

One servant receives five talents, another receives two, and another receives one.

When the boss returns, the men who had received five talents and two talents tell him they had invested the money and doubled it. The boss is pleased with them.

The third man, who had been given only one talent, was afraid of losing what little had, so he buried it until the boss returned. The boss is furious. “You worthless wretch!” he says, taking that one talent and giving it to the man who had been given five.

I HATED THAT STORY! Very, very much. I felt like I was the man who had been trusted with little and then told I wasn’t good enough because I had been given less to work with than those around me.

It bugged the heck out of me for years.

But as I got older, I actually got around to recognizing people the people around me — good, wise, insightful, Bible-reading people — making the most of whatever God had given them, and then THANKING him for the opportunity to serve him.

Through their example, I’ve gradually come to see that no matter how much or little God has entrusted to me, I owe him my very best. I owe him everything. I owe it all back to him with all the love of my heart. No matter how difficult.

That is the Bible in action in a faith community. Seeing it and hearing it and reading it makes me want to help God make me better for the sake of all those around me.

His Good News is changing me.

Jay Nies has been editor of The Catholic Missourian since 2000.