NOTES for Luk 19:26-27

These are the closing words of the parable about three servants who received different sums from their master and used them in different ways. The parable itself is inseparable from the context in which the Lord tells it. He offers it to the disciples precisely while going up to Jerusalem, and this means that He compares His coming to Jerusalem for the Passion with the master's return to his servants. It is precisely now that the day of God's visitation comes, as the Lord Himself called this moment. It is precisely at the Cross that it becomes clear what you have done with the life God entrusted to you. Our faithfulness to Him is tested not when people want to "take" Jesus unexpectedly and "make Him King." On the contrary, faithfulness to God is required of us when He is humiliated and diminished before people, when the human race mocks its Creator and derides Him.

The main demand placed on the servants in the parable is to use what was given to them to manage in the way the master himself would have done. What matters is not even the increase of the wealth given to them to manage: the master makes no complaint if the growth is not very great. Judging from what is said to the last, negligent servant, what matters is precisely conformity to the master's way of acting. And another essential aspect of the parable is that it does not even occur to any of the servants that the silver left with them belongs not to the master, but to themselves. Indeed, such a thought would be obviously mistaken. Since the silver here serves as a symbol of a person's life and possibilities, what is said can be extended to them. Neither life nor the ability to act in this world belongs to us ourselves; it is a gift we receive from God in order to use it according to His image and likeness. We are given the freedom necessary for this, but together with it responsibility is laid on us for how we dispose of the life given to us.

The Lord tells us that the fate of the gift of life we have received depends on how we use it. The one who does this in accordance with the Lord's design receives in abundance. The one who acts otherwise loses everything. These words frighten us and often provoke protest. The fate of the negligent servant terrifies us, and therefore the master's sentence seems unjust. But the silver in the parable and our life in reality do not belong to us, so there is only one way not to fall under the fate of the negligent servant: to be faithful. This is a choice that must be made and answered for, but after all, one cannot really refuse this responsibility.