God makes Good Loans, but do we make Good Investments?
According to the parable of the Lord [Luke 19:12-27], the first of ten servants told his master when he returned from a long journey, ‘Lord, your pound has made ten pounds more.’ That servant’s single pound bore interest tenfold. A second servant’s pound bore fivefold. A third servant’s pound bore no interest at all.
‘Why did you not put my money into the bank?’ The Lord asks for the profit on his own money, not ours. The third servant explains that he kept it hidden in the ground. That means that he has wasted his intellect on earthly pleasures and buried his reason, which was given him in the image and likeness of God, in the pit of lasciviousness.
The parable says nothing about the other seven servants. They are debtors who squandered the money they received.
Matthew also makes a similar comparison, observing that the rich man who does not distribute his goods to the poor is seriously at fault. But equally at fault is anyone who could distribute the truth but keeps it to himself.
Ambrose, On the Gospel of St Luke, 8, 91 (PLI5, 1792)
When the Play is over
Think of actors: they wear masks, they dress up. One looks like a philosopher while not being one; another seems to be a king but is no king; another appears to be a doctor and has not the faintest idea how to cure the sick; another pretends to be a slave despite being free; still another plays the part of a teacher yet does not even know how to write.
They do not appear as they are, they appear to be something else. The philosopher is a philosopher only because of his abundant but false wig, the soldier is a soldier just because he sports a military uniform. These disguises help to create an illusion, to hide the reality.
The world is a theatre too. The human condition, richness, poverty, power, subjection are merely the pretences of actors.
But when the day is done and the night falls (which, however, we ought to call day: it is night for sinners and day for the just), when the play is over, when we all find ourselves confronted with our own actions and not with our riches or dignity or the honours we have had or the power we have wielded, when we are asked to give an account of our lives and our works of virtue, ignoring both the feats of our opulence and the humility of our need, when we are asked: ‘Show me your deeds!’, then the disguises will fall and we shall see who is truly rich and who is truly poor.
John Chrysostom, Homily on Lazarus, 6, 5 (PG48, 1034)
~Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary, Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
