Lectio Divina – Quotes related to the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary time

Pope St. Gregory the Great (540-614): The man in travelling into a far country is our Redeemer, who ascended into heaven in that human body which He had taken upon Him. For the proper home of the human body is the earth, and it, as it were, travels into a foreign country, when it is placed by the Redeemer in heaven.

St. Jerome (340/2-420): Calling together the Apostles, He gave them the Gospel doctrine, to one more, to another less, not as of His own bounty or scanting, but as meeting the capacity of the receivers, as the Apostle says (1 Cor 3:2), that he fed with milk those that were unable to take solid food. In the five, two, and one talent, we recognise the diversity of gifts wherewith we have been entrusted. … The servant who of five talents had made ten, and he who of two had made four, are received with equal favour by the Master of the household, who looks not to the largeness of their profit, but to the disposition of their will.

Pope St. Gregory the Great (540-614): To hide one’s talent in the earth is to devote the ability we have received to worldly business.

Rabanus Maurus (c. 780-856): “Well done” is an interjection of joy; the Lord showing us therein the joy with which He invites the servant who labours well to eternal bliss; of which the Prophet speaks, “In thy presence is fulness of joy.” (Ps 16:11)

Elias Levi-Merikakis (Br. Simeon): ‘We know what the Lord thinks of servants who bury their talents out of fear of losing them. Our greatest talent and treasure is our ability to love, and in this enterprise the champion is the greatest risk taker, which means the one most willing to invest himself where the odds appear most against him The absolute victor is Jesus crucified. Love, the overflow of goodness, is, as Thomas Aquinas tells us, “diffusive of itself.” […] If a characteristic of cosmic nature is horror vacui, an “abhorrence of the [physical] void” the divine nature abhors the void of love and runs to remedy it. To be in heaven, to have one’s dwelling in the heavens, far from connoting a spiritualistic fleeing from the earth, means rather to reside in the fullness of love and to be always engaged in bestowing the benefits of love on others – to pour out one’s being into the void of others as if one were sunlight and rain.