Our strengths tell us who we are and what we can do. Our weaknesses and limitations put a check on us and sober us up. They keep our feet solidly rooted in reality. We are not perfect; we are perfectible. We have to work with who we are and what we have been equipped with. We have to work with ourselves, and often in spite of ourselves. It is not how many talents we have been given that is important; it is what we do with the talents that we do have. We have to be accountable for the talents we have received. We cannot bury them as the ungrateful servant did and blamed his master as in the Parable of the Talents spoken by Christ (Matthew 25, 14-30). There is no justice or fairness in terms of what we came into this world with or the situations that we have been born into or the fortunes and good luck or misfortunes, accidents, diseases, disasters, and bad luck that we are subjected to.
How can it be fair when my friend who was doing doctoral studies with me in St. Louis University, Missouri, USA, was struck down by cancer at the age of 34 long ago, and yet I am very much alive and kicking and writing all these things? Both of us have been selected by the Jesuits to teach in Jnana Deep Vidyapeeth in Pune, India. It does not really matter how many years we live. What matters are how we live the years we do have. Sometimes a shortcoming or blemish can even work in our favor. I am reminded of the story of a king and his attendant lost in a dense forest while hunting. They fell into the hands of a very primitive tribe searching for a man for a human sacrifice for the success of their crops. They did not consider the attendant to be fit for the sacrifice in that he had a bad cut on one of his fingers, that amounted to a blemish, and that was really caused by the king’s ire. The king who did not have any bodily blemish was sacrificed. In sum, a truly spiritual person focuses on strengths while accepting weaknesses. By accepting weaknesses we in a way overcome them and go beyond them.
Previous: -A Universal Prayer