I’d like to talk today about Oblation, but not as a ceremony or a group within
the program. I’d like to talk about it in its root meaning as something
offered to God. That is basically what the meaning of Oblation is.
Now Benedictines, in whatever capacity, are men
and women who offer ourselves to God through a life inspired and guided by the
Rule of Benedict. We do that either through vows, for those of us who are
in the monastery, or for lifelong Oblation in an association like ours under
the auspices of a Benedictine monastery, or sometimes even more informally than
that. St. Benedict has reached out very far.
Now, just as a sidebar for newcomers, on our
group’s structure, There’s been a little confusion about a few things, so I
thought I’d clear this up. We have a weird situation where we have two
Oblate directors. I’m actually the Oblate director, but I don’t live at
the Abbey very much, so Mother Maria Thomas, who is the retired Abbess of the
Monastery and the retired Oblate Director, has very graciously taken on the
responsibility of conducting the meetings that happen during the year, and it
is she who will be coordinating the Oblation in October.
So we have Oblate Directors appointed by Mother
Maria-Michael Newe, OSB, Abbess of the Abbey of St. Walburga. We also
have, thanks to Mother Maria-Thomas’s inspiration, regional groups, five
regional groups now that are coordinated by experienced Oblates who convoke the
group, welcome inquirers and do whatever else is needed. Because of
geography and climate and distance, some people need to start out with a local
group first, and then eventually make their way to the Abbey. But at some
point we would like to invite you to make your way to the Abbey and talk to one
of us, so that we have that connection. The local coordinators are the
ones who recommend candidates for enrollment or oblation.
Now because of distances and Colorado weather, the
regional groups are the working heart of the program. But the Abbey is
the center, where all of you are welcome any time for a time of prayer, or for
some consultation with the directors, depending on availability. For
those of you who are not familiar with the regional groups, they meet about
once a month to study the rule together, using some edition of Mother Maria
Thomas’s study guide for Oblates. There are various editions of this in
use in various groups. The latest one was printed very recently. The
first printing has sold out, but a second printing will soon be available in
the Abbey Gift Shop (www.walburga.org).
So the regional groups meet to study the Rule
together, and also, and just as importantly, to provide mutual support in
living according to its principles, because this is a flesh and blood way of
life. Monasticism is very practical and so we work in the concrete, and the
group is there to supply support.
Benedictine spirituality is always a practical
matter of times, places and practices. So that is what our focus is in
reflecting on what the structures and principles given by the Rule provide for
us in the way of living and growing our everyday life.
We think of Oblation itself it as a ceremony, but it’s
really a rich and multifaceted set of interactions between God, who is the
first giver and ourselves. We make Oblation, that is, self-offering, but
God is the first giver. We are not.
So what I would like to do today is look at the
parable of the talents, as a way of reflecting on this interpersonal
exchange. The parable is found in Matthew 25:14-30, but we will end this
reflection with Verse 28.
In Chapter 25, Jesus is talking about the final
sorting out of things at the end of time. But obviously that has enormous
repercussions for all of us who are living toward that time, either personally
or globally. He says that time “… will be as when a man who is going on a
journey called on his servants and entrusted his possessions to them. To
one he gave 5 talents; to another two; to a third, one; to each according to
his ability.” Note that the amounts were not arbitrary. The sum entrusted to each person was
determined by that person’s ability, not too much for the man who could handle
only one talent, not too little for the man who could handle 5.
The story continues: “Then he went
away. Immediately the one who received five talents went and
traded with them, and made another five. Likewise, the one who
received two made another two. But the man who received one went off
and dug a hole in the ground and buried his master’s money. After a long
time the master of those servants came back and settled accounts with
them. The one who had received five talents came forward bringing
the additional five. He said, ‘Master, you gave me five talents.
See, I have made five more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, my
good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will
give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.’ “
Note that sharing the master’s joy includes taking
on more responsibilities, not just sitting around in retirement drinking
lemonade!
“[Then] the one who had received two talents also
came forward and said, ‘Master, you gave me two talents. See, I have made two
more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great
responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.’ Then the one who
had received the one talent came forward and said, ‘Master, I knew you were a
demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you
did not scatter, so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the
ground. Here it is back.’ His master said to him in reply, ‘You
wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I did not plant and
gather where I did not scatter? Should you not then have put my money in
the bank so that I could have got it back with interest on my return?”
The first thing to notice, I think, is that in
praying with the parable we have to remind ourselves what a parable is. A
parable is always a story, it’s always fiction, although I’m imagining Jesus
knew some of the characters in these stories. And it’s a story with one
point and the one point is usually a twist in the tail of the story. It’s
something unexpected that happens.
Like in this story we are set up by repetition, to
say “OK, this one got that much, he went off and invested it. He brought
back double. And the next one got this much, he went off and invested it
and came back and brought double.” And so we would think with the third one,
who got only the one – that’s not so much to have to deal with-- that he would
have gone off and invested it and come back with two, and we would have all gone away
satisfied.
But that’s not what happens, because this is a
parable. So the one behaves in an unexpected way, and gets an even more
unexpected result. He loses what he had.
Now, the details in a parable are there to make a
good story, not necessarily to communicate other meanings. So we have to
be careful when we read a story like this one that we don’t go away thinking
that God is a hard-hearted financial investor, as the man with one talent
imagined. And we have all met that God somewhere along the line in our
religious formation: “God’s going to get you for what you didn’t do, and
you’d better do this much to please God.”
Jesus is telling a good story – he is a good
storyteller. He has all the details add up to be part of the story
framework, but they are not the point. So Jesus is not saying “God is a
hard-hearted, mean financial investor, who harvests where he did not sow, and
wants more back than you even feel like on any given day that you can
provide”. So we’ll look a little further here.
When we read a story like this we need to step
back and think about the bigger context. What is the picture of God that
Jesus gives us in all of the gospels? It’s the picture of a God of mercy,
a God of forgiveness, God who will allow us to experience the consequences of
the choices we have made, but who does it terribly reluctantly and often with
great grief, if we’ve made destructive choices. So keep that God in mind.
The second thing is that God is the one who gives
the talents for the recipients to work with, but what they do with them in order
to make a suitable return is up to them. There is no user’s manual, there
is no instructions book, there is no help menu in the story. God gives
them the talents but does not tell them exactly what to do with them.
We need to ask more questions here. What are
the talents? Now in the story, the word is misleading in English, because
as you know these are cash coins, they are not talents, like gifts of music or
writing or poetry or farming or any of those things.
So that provokes the question; What does God give
us to work with, really? Not a sack of coins. I’m sure sometimes
you’d like to have a sack of coins handed to you, but that’s not the way it
works. In reality, in the bigger picture the person is the package.
Every person is a bundle of possibilities that can’t be counted like
coins.
So in real experience the 3…2…1… talents are for
the sake of a good story about this mean-hearted master and these
servants. But life is not like that. This is not saying that some
people have more and are better than other people. How often have we made
that mistake? Nobody knows what possibilities any other person has in the
package that was given them.
So we can’t look around and say “Oh, she has more
talents than I do. Or he has more talents than I do.” We don’t know
that. We don’t know what the hidden possibilities of a person are and we
often make big mistakes in judging and
quantifying those possibilities, those gifts, because we tend to evaluate them
in terms of our societal standards. This person has more money.
This person is able to do more public things. This person has the skills
to get success in whatever ways society is defining success. That’s not
what it’s about. Every person is an indefinable package of
possibilities. Quantities and tangible worth are irrelevant.
So the numbers belong to the story image, but not
to the human reality.
Secondly, what do we do with what we receive?
What is this business of investing or trading and making more and coming back
and pleasing God?
What God is really always inviting us to do with
this package of the self given us is to grow into the full possibilities of the
package, to go from this little nugget of promise that we all are when we start
out into a fully mature and well developed human being. We cannot judge the
final results for ourselves, ever. Because we tend to either over-judge
it or under-judge it.
So all we are asked to do with this package of
possibilities that we are given as we are starting out, is to develop it in
every sense and way that life allows us and grace assists us, so that become
all God desires us to be. Not… “I’ve
made more of this, I have the gift of singing and I have turned that into a
great success as a concert singer”. That’s not what this is about.
It’s about how I hve grown grown into all of the possibilities of my person,
including those I have not yet recognized.
The third thing is, does God really go away and
let us get on with it with no help or users’ manual? That’s what the
master in the story does. He goes away and leaves everybody alone. They
have to cope the best way they can. Presumably they learned something
about investing and marketing somewhere along the way. Maybe the guy who
buried his talent said “I don’t know what to do with this. Let me just
put it in there, and give it back to him.’’
We know that’s absolutely untrue of our
relationship with God. God has incorporated us into Jesus Christ, and in
Christ we have every help we could possibly need. St. Paul says that at
the beginning of the letter to the Ephesians. We have every help we could
need. So God doesn’t leave us without help. In fact, God never
leaves, for one thing. At the end of Matthew’s gospel Jesus says to the
disciples and all of us “I will be with you always.”
So God is always there and always helping us with
the Spirit poured out upon us. And God
has given us the Scriptures as a users’ guide. God never turns us into helpless
infants. Only helpless infants are helpless infants. God treats everybody
else as being capable of taking responsibility. Maybe we are scared,
maybe we think we can’t do it. Maybe we are afraid we will fail.
But God is always there in our corner, saying “You can do it. I’m not
going to do it for you. I’ll do it with you. I’ll always do it with
you, but I’m not going to do it for you.” Because that turns us into
infants, it turns us into puppets, it turns us into less than the human beings
that we are.
So in the end, if we read this story in a deeper
kind of way, using what’s very helpful from the imagery, we are responsible for
our side of the collaboration, and making the most of us. God is
responsible for God’s side in that collaboration. And there is no way of
saying where God’s work stops and ours begins. It just doesn’t work
that way.
So what we offer back to God as an Oblation, in
whatever walk of life we follow is ourselves; all that we are. Not a sack of coins. Not a report card.
Not newspaper articles about what a success we were. We offer back to God
all that we have become.
Now I’d like to use as some imagery for that two
prayers that are always used in the preparation of the gifts to be offered in
the Roman Catholic liturgy, in the Mass. Although they are Catholic, they
have universal implications for everybody.
The first one says “Blessed are you, Lord God of
all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer
you, fruit of the earth and work of human hands…”
And the second prayer is similar; “Blessed
are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received
the wine we offer you, the fruit of the vine and work of human hands…”
There’s a really interesting dynamic in those
prayers, that we often don’t hear, or ignore, or pass over. It’s that God
gives us the basic material that we have to offer; in the case of the bread,
fruit of the earth; in case of the wine, fruit of the vine. But in both
cases what God has given us as the basic materials for our offering is
transformed by our own work. Human beings went out into the field, and
plowed the field and planted the wheat. They watched the wheat grow.
Human beings cut that wheat down, human beings thresh it and separate the grain
from the chaff. Human being grind the grain into flour and human beings
make the bread. Only very rarely might the same human beings do all of those
things. Many people engage in the work, each according to his or her own
gifts and circumstances.
So the bread that we offer started out as God’s
gift. But God’s gift is the possibility : wheat in the field. That’s hard
to eat, doesn’t taste very good; it’s cracks
teeth, and it doesn’t nourish us. It becomes nourishing through our own
labors, the labors of many people. All of the gifts we have been given
grow into what God wants us to be through interaction, not only with God, but
those around us, with lots of other people, some of whom we know and see every
day, some of whom we don’t know at all.
So this whole business of Oblation, God’s gift to
us and our return of self to God, is a very complex set of personal
interactions between God and human beings, and among human beings. It’s a
significant dimension of all Christian life, not just Benedictine life.
In the Benedictine process of Oblation, or self-gift, we mark the key moments
with ceremonies, the enrollment of novices and the final oblation of those
novices after a formation period.
But these ceremonies are not graduations. St.
Benedict says that Benedictine life is a school in which we are enrolled as
lifelong learners. Our primary textbook
is the Scriptures, but our specific text for learning to live the Scriptures in
the spirit of St. Benedict is the Rule of St. Benedict. Through our study and internalization of
these texts, and the other guides God supplies us with along the way, the Spirit of God teaches us how to make
maximum use of our gifts in order to become what God wants us to be.
