“Well done, my good and faithful servant [ . . . ] Come, share your master’s joy.” // Matthew 25:21
“I didn’t want to lose you. I didn’t want to let you go. Then, one day I just realized, you don’t belong to me. God let me borrow you, but I had to give you back.” This was my mom’s response when I commented on a new peace I had observed in her one weekend when she visited me in the convent.
The tears of gratitude and love that filled my eyes as my mom articulated her willingness to entrust me back to the Father now fill her eyes as she witnesses me living my vocation. She now looks on with joy and maternal pride when, in the grocery store, a little girl comes up to me and asks, “Are you a Mary?” or someone approaches and asks me for prayers. Perhaps, too, as she reads this very devotion, she is aware of how her support, love, and encouragement of me over the years are now leading to others being supported, loved, and encouraged.
My mom sees now that her struggle was feeling like she “wasn’t done with me.” I know I feel the same way when the Lord asks me to entrust back something, or someone, He has given to me for a time: Lord I’m not ready to do this, or let this go, or launch this idea . . .
Like the talents in today’s Gospel, the Lord entrusts much to us throughout our lives that we might help grow His Kingdom. These talents might be actual abilities we’re hesitant to share, or the gift of time to help others. A “talent” I think is often overlooked, for mothers especially, is that of children. As with any talent, we must nurture and help them grow, but then we must share them with the world in order for them to bear fruit.
Sister, what is the Lord asking you to share with the world? Where is your heart reluctant to surrender what He has given you for the building of the Kingdom, that you, too, might hear the consoling words, “Well done, my good and faithful servant [ . . . ] Come, share your master’s joy” (Matthew 25:23)?
Sister Maria Fatima grew up in Rhode Island and entered the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist in 2005. She holds a MA in Theology from the Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity. Sister is in her eleventh year of enlightening middle school minds and drawing hearts to Jesus while teaching religion and history. She currently resides at the motherhouse in Ann Arbor, MI, having previously taught in Texas, Florida, and Ohio. She is a contributing author to our Lent devotional All She Had.
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