“When is it all going to end?” A terminally ill mother asked her son. “It will end mum” he said simply. Perhaps the most difficult thing for someone going through suffering is to see the end of it. As is the nature of suffering, it will make one feel like that is all there is. It is hard to see anything else but what one is experiencing at that moment. The same can be said about someone who is having a good time. It is easy to think that it will go on forever as that is exactly what you want – that lasting happiness. Yet, nothing in life last forever. Everything in life will come to an end at some stage. The Master will return home.

The readings of these last three weeks of the liturgical calendar draw our attention to the final ends of things. Death is an obvious example of ‘the end’. However, in the second reading from last week Paul assures the Thessalonians that death is not the end. Those who died in Christ will live with him. Life continues beyond death. This week, Paul stresses on the unpredictability of the Day of the Lord, that final day when God will set right all injustices and be all in all. Though not always, our death can be so unpredictable too, but it will not be anything like the final coming of Christ. Yet, both are the same in the sense that it will be inescapable. It will come! So what is the lesson?

It is true that the readings of these last three weeks do talk about the final things, yet, the point of these readings is contradictorily about the present. The end will come, when and how we do not know. But what is ‘the end’ exactly? For us Christians our ‘end’ (or better ‘goal’) is our final encounter with Christ which we long for. Far from ‘the end’ (that’s sit no more), the end for us is so much to look forward to. There is no end without the present and there is no present without end. And so what is at ‘the end’ is connected to what is at the present. The end of our lives is a reflection of what is at the present. So as the Liturgy of the Word of these last three weeks of the liturgical year talks about the end of time, it invites us to reflect on the present and calls us to make best use of our time.

The gospel this week, far from simply giving us a warning about what happens at the end of time, calls us to make use of our gifts and talents God has given us to their full potential. God entrusts his talents to us and give us the freedom to make use of them. The interesting point of the parable is that master does not set any expectation when he entrusts his talents to his servants. When he returns home, he simply calls them up and goes through his accounts with them. The first two makes good use of the talents given to them. The third does not make any use of the talent given him, not because he has no ability of doing so, but his image of the master hinders him to invest in his talent. In his mind, the master is a hard man, so he is too afraid to make use of the talent. It is not clear whether he is scared of the master or he is lazy to do anything with his talent. In any case, nothing happened to the talent given him. And the ultimate reason for this is actually him not having confidence in himself nor his master. On one hand, he doesn’t trust in his ability so he plays it safe; on the other hand, he doesn’t trust in the judgment of his master.

Each of us has our own unique gifts and talents given by God. We are also given the ability to make use of them. They cannot be seen as a burden; they are gifts to us for our own salvation for to use in the service of the Kingdom. It is up to us to make use of them, God does not force it. However, it is not always solely up to us to make use of our gifts and potentials, at times we need the trust of others to give us the confidence to unlock our talents. Sometimes the hardest person to trust is ourselves so the encouragement from others makes all the difference. But not only do we need others to help us to realize our full potential, we also need to encourage and help others to realize theirs as well. In this way, we will come to have life and have it to the full and so to realize that the End is not all that far from us.

Deacon Tien Tran