The fourth parable is that in which the Lord in Matthew speaks thus of the reward of beatitude: Well done, good and faithful servant; because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord (Matt. 25). In this passage two things are promised to faithful servants: most ample power, and the greatest joy. Over many things, He says, I will place thee; and what those many things are, He explains in another place when He says: Blessed is that servant, whom when his lord shall come he shall find so doing: for he shall place him over all his goods (Matt. 24). But what is it to be placed over all the goods of the Lord, except to receive power over all inferior things, and to be made a sharer in the dominion which God has over the whole world? Who can grasp how great this power is? What king or emperor on earth can be compared with the least of the blessed?
But because so great a power does not seem capable of being held by a man without great care and disturbance of mind, therefore the Lord adds: Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord: as if He wished to say, Just as I make thee a sharer in the highest power, so also I make thee a sharer in the highest rest and pleasure, which no care will be able to hinder or diminish. How great this joy is, which is promised to the just in heaven, is altogether inexplicable, nor shall we know it before we have learned it by experience. Meanwhile, however, from three words of this very sentence we may in some measure conjecture that that joy will be the greatest. The first word is, Enter thou, for that it is not said, Let the joy of thy Lord enter into thee, but on the contrary, Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord, is proof that this joy is greater than we can wholly contain. And so we shall enter, as it were, into a great sea of everlasting and divine joy, which will fill us wholly within and without, and will overflow on every side. What place, then, can there be for sadness amid so great an abundance of joy? The second word is, Into joy; where we are not promised this or that joy — the joy of this or that good — but joy itself absolutely, pleasure itself, delight itself, sweetness itself. And how should not the whole soul melt, suffused with such sweetness? But the third word is the one that heightens this matter beyond measure, namely, of your Lord. For we shall enter not into the joy in which men, or any Angels whatsoever, rejoice, but into that in which God rejoices — in whom all things are infinite. Who can conceive what manner of joy the joy of God is — His, who knows perfectly His own infinite goodness, and enjoys it, and rejoices in it in an infinite manner? And yet, O Christian, what you cannot now conceive, you will be able to experience and taste, and to enjoy forever, if you are willing to be a good and faithful servant.
Let us now see, therefore, to whom such great promises pertain. They pertain, surely, to those who have taken care to multiply faithfully the talents committed to them by God. For the comparison is taken from a rich man, who delivered his goods to his servants, and gave to one five talents, to another two, and to a third one; and he charged them to take care to multiply the talents by diligent and prudent trading.
Now the opinions of the sacred interpreters concerning the meaning of the talents are various. Some understand by the talents the graces bestowed; others, the holy Scriptures; others hold that the five talents are the knowledge of exterior things, which is acquired through the senses; that the two talents are the intellect and operation; and that the single talent is the intellect alone; others, finally, that they are natural goods, such as intelligence and judgment, and spiritual goods, such as the gift of faith, hope, and charity. But all agree in this: that to multiply the talents is to work well for one's own salvation and that of others. Another exposition occurs to me, which is not opposed to the others, and seems in every respect to fit what the Lord says of the talents. First, then, in this passage the goods of the Lord are called talents: He delivered to them, it says, His goods. Secondly, the talents are commanded to be multiplied by trading in the same kind: Thou didst deliver to me five talents; behold, I have gained other five. Thirdly, they are said to be given to each one according to his own ability. Lastly, the talent is taken away from the wicked and slothful servant. I therefore take the talents to be the souls of faithful and devout men, which are committed to the fidelity and diligence of prelates. For these are truly the goods of the Lord, which He does not give to us, but commits to us to be cared for and multiplied. For this reason the Lord did not say to Peter, Feed thy sheep, but, My sheep (John 21). The rest are our goods, though given by the Lord — such as intelligence, judgment, the Scriptures, graces freely given, and all the rest. But faithful and devout souls He calls His goods, His vineyard, His household, His bride: for these He came into the world; to redeem these He shed His blood; to win these He sent the Apostles, to whom He said: I will make you to be fishers of men (Matt. 4).
Moreover, faithful souls are multiplied in the same kind when a prelate converts sinners by word and example, as St. Peter did (Acts 2), when to the one hundred and twenty faithful whom Christ had at first committed to him, when He said, Feed my sheep, he converted on the day of Pentecost, in that very first sermon, about three thousand men, then about five thousand (Acts 4), and afterwards many thousands. And St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, who when he was made Bishop of Neocaesarea found seventeen faithful, so multiplied them that, when he was at the point of death, in so large a city only seventeen unbelievers were left — a thing which St. Gregory of Nyssa relates in the Life of the same St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, which he wrote at length and with great care.
Moreover, these talents are committed to each one according to his own ability. God also, who knows the strength of all — that is, their prudence, knowledge, charity, and fortitude — does not entrust souls save to those whom He knows to be fit to bear that burden. And therefore no one ought to thrust himself into the care of souls, into the episcopate especially, unless called by Him who distributes the talents according to each one's own ability. Otherwise it will be no wonder if many fall beneath the burden; nor will they find excuse before God if they say that they had not shoulders equal to so great a load. For it will be answered: Who forced you to take up a burden beyond your strength? Did you not yourself desire it, and beg for it, and strive to obtain it? Now therefore suffer yourself to be cast, bound hand and foot, into the exterior darkness.
Finally, the talent committed to the slothful servant is taken away from him. And this also fits most exactly, if we say that the talents are the souls of the faithful. For he who received one talent — that is, the care of his own soul alone — if he has not cared for it rightly, will lose his soul: for he will become a slave of the devil. For just as the blessed acquire the liberty of the children of God, whereby they abide most freely where they will and do whatever they will, so on the contrary the reprobate lose all liberty; and with hands and feet bound, they can neither walk where they will, nor do what they desire, but are forced to remain where they do not wish, and to do none of the things they wish; and this is to lose one's soul. And so this interpretation, in which the talents are understood to be the souls of the faithful, is in every way fitted to the parable. But to show how the other interpretations can be aptly fitted to it is very difficult; yet they are not on that account false, or to be rejected, because it is not necessary that everything be fitted, as St. John Chrysostom rightly observes, but it is enough that what is principal in the parable be fitted (Hom. 48 and 65 on Matthew). We, however, will follow out our own exposition, not rejecting the others, as I have said.
Therefore the Lord committed talents to three kinds of men: to those who are perfect, such as bishops ought to be, He gave five talents, that is, whole peoples to be cared for; to others less perfect, such as parish priests usually are, two talents, that is, fewer souls, such as are contained in one parish; to others still more unskilled and weak, such as the common people, to each a single talent, that is, the care of his own soul alone. Yet these too ought, in such way as they can — by the word of private exhortation and by the example of an innocent life — to convert others from sins to the way of justice, and in that way to multiply the talent committed to them. And what has been said of bishops and parish priests must likewise be understood of secular princes and magistrates, and of fathers of families. For so writes St. Augustine: "Let every father of a family acknowledge that by this name he owes a father's affection to his household. For Christ and for eternal life let him admonish all his own, teach them, exhort them, rebuke them, show them kindness, exercise discipline: so in his own house he will fulfill an ecclesiastical and, in a manner, episcopal office" (Tract. LI on John). And in this sense Constantine the Great used to say that he was a bishop outside the Church — he who took care, as far as he could, that the Church be preserved and spread, yet did not usurp ecclesiastical functions.
And lest anyone should think that in this parable only one man, or only one kind of men, is reproved — because he alone who had received one talent is read to have been reproved and punished — it must be known that the Lord willed that from him we should understand the dangers of those in higher office. For just as from this — that at the last judgment He will give rewards to those who gave corporal alms (Matt. 25), and punishments to those who did not — we understand that greater rewards are in store for those who give spiritual alms, and the greatest for the holy Apostles and Martyrs and for Virgins who exercise heroic virtues; and on the contrary that thieves and robbers and perjurers and the sacrilegious are to be afflicted with greater torments than those who did not bestow alms on the poor: so also in this place, from the fact that he who had received one talent — which he could easily have multiplied — yet did not multiply it, is most gravely punished, we ought to understand that it is so much the easier for bishops and pastors and princes and magistrates to fail in this matter, as the office they exercise is graver and more perilous; and that they are to be punished in the judgment so much the more severely, as the loss of many souls is greater than that of one.
Let us hear what St. Augustine says of the danger of ecclesiastical office in the letter he wrote to his bishop Valerius: "Above all things I beg that your religious prudence consider that there is nothing in this life, and especially at this time, easier or more pleasant or more acceptable to men than the office of Bishop or Presbyter or Deacon, if the charge be discharged perfunctorily or with flattery; but nothing before God sadder, more wretched, or more damnable. Likewise, that there is nothing in this life, and especially at this time, more difficult or more laborious than the office of Bishop or Presbyter or Deacon; but before God nothing more blessed, if the warfare be waged in the manner our Emperor commands" (Epist. 141). So he writes — and in the rest of the letter he treats this same argument in such a way that care must be taken that all churchmen read it attentively, and most of all those who rashly aspire to the episcopate or the presbyterate, and who, when they have obtained what they sought and found what they desired, either desert their flock or, intent on other matters, think of nothing less than of caring for and increasing the number of the faithful and devout. Certainly the shepherds, on the night of the birth of the Lord, the Prince of all shepherds, kept the night watches over their flock (Luke 2); and if this was done over a flock devoid of reason by those who bore the figure of the shepherds of the Church, how much more ought it to be done by those who are truly her shepherds — Christ Himself, while He dwelt on earth, having passed the whole night in prayer, not surely for Himself but keeping vigil for His sheep (Luke 6)?
And if the patriarch Jacob was so worn out with labor for the sheep of his father-in-law Laban that he said, Day and night was I parched with heat and with frost, and sleep departed from my eyes: what ought the shepherd of the sheep of Christ to do, for whom He shed His blood? And if the Devil, like a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour (1 Pet. 5), would it not also be just that the good shepherd should continually go about his flock, seeking whom he might set free?
But, they will say, the affairs of the Church itself compel us to desert the flock. I do not gainsay it, if the business is weighty and only a short time need be spent in dispatching it; otherwise greater affairs must be set before lesser ones, and the greater they ought to dispatch in person, the lesser through others. For if business compels them to leave the flock, greater business — nay, even the most grievous wars — compels them not to leave the defense of the flock. For the Apostolic trumpet thunders: Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places (Eph. 6). And if the leader is absent, who will teach the soldiers how they are to quench the fiery darts of the most wicked one? Certainly the Lord said to Peter, and in him to all pastors, Feed my sheep; the rest He passed over in silence, that we might understand this alone to be the chief duty. And in the episcopal consecration it is said, Go, preach to the people committed to your care — and nothing is added concerning temporal affairs, so that the bishop is warned that temporal things are not to be made equal to spiritual things, and much less preferred to them. Finally, in the Council of Carthage (Fourth Council of Carthage, canons 41, 48, 19, 20), with what earnestness it is enjoined on bishops that they should conduct the care of widows and orphans and strangers not in person but through an archpriest or an archdeacon; that they should not undertake the trusteeship of wills; that they should neither litigate nor lodge appeals over transitory things; and that they should take upon themselves no care of household affairs, but devote themselves solely to reading, to prayer, and to the word of preaching.
And so a council of two hundred and fourteen bishops — that is, of the whole of Africa — at which St. Augustine also was present, willed that bishops should without exception handle all temporal affairs, even pious and necessary ones, through others, so that they themselves might be freer to devote themselves to guarding and increasing the flock. This parable, therefore, just as it shows eternal happiness to be a thing especially to be desired — since it contains the greatest power joined with the greatest pleasure — so also shows that the way to that happiness is unceasing labor, spent in seeking and procuring the salvation of one's own soul and of others. Those who refuse to undergo this labor are deprived not only of that happiness and of that surpassing power and pleasure, but, condemned to hell, they suffer eternal punishments. For so speaks the Lord: And the unprofitable servant cast ye out into the exterior darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 25). And here it must also be carefully observed that the servant who is sentenced to so great a punishment is called not impious, not criminal, not wicked, but merely unprofitable: for even if a bishop or a parish priest, or a prince or a magistrate, or a father of a family, or anyone else whatsoever, be free of other crimes, for this alone — that he has been unprofitable, that is, has not procured the salvation of those under his charge — he is cast into the exterior darkness, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth which shall never end. And if the unprofitable servant will suffer these things, what will become of the wicked servant — the covetous, the proud, the lustful, the one covered with many vices? If the unprofitable servant is rejected, what account will the impious and treacherous one render to the Lord for the talents committed to him? Surely those who consider these things do not aspire to posts of authority; and if they are forced to undertake them, they keep watch always with fear and trembling, as men who must render a most exact account for the souls committed to them.