“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1.3), and especially with the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. As baptised and confirmed Christians, we know intimately the depth and scope and challenge of the Eucharistic Mystery, both as Sacrifice and as Sacrament.
Taking for just a moment the Lord’s parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) in reviewing our lives, let us focus on the third servant. The greatest mistake of the third servant in the parable of the talents is not that he buried his talent. His great failing is that he allowed fear to impede the fruition of his God-given talent. To surrender to fear of risking anything in God’s service is to reject the Lord’s call to live a life fully formed and informed by the eternal Word of God. The Holy Spirit’s gift of “the fear of the Lord” is something else entirely: the true fear of the Lord is the reverent love and willing service offered by those who belong to Christ and who seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness (Matthew 6.33).
Keeping one’s talent safe from risks, that is, secure from question and challenge, is not faithfulness to God. We know from the saints and spiritual masters that true fidelity to Christ does not consist in complacency or in leaving the status quo unchanged.
Advent is a fitting time to ask ourselves:
- Do we harbor an attitude that masks habits of passivity, fear of conflict, paralysis, comfort seeking?
- Do we lack trust in the promptings of the Holy Spirit?
- What do I need to do, concretely, to enter through the eye of the needle to embrace my vocation as a follower of Christ?
- How does the parable of the talents challenge my reality as it is?
- What does my Examination of Conscience reveal to me about what would need to change so that I can fully live the gifts of faith, hope and charity?
When we act eucharistically and with openness to the Holy Spirit, we give up the need to control the outcome of our actions, allowing ourselves to enter into the story of the unfolding of God’s Kingdom in his Church, “which he obtained with his own Blood” (Acts 20.28). When Knights and Dames of the Holy Sepulchre act in faith rather than from servile fear, then the Holy Spirit is truly at work in us. This is the spiritual challenge before us this Advent.