Using Your Talents

Focus Quotes

“The unprofitable servant is to be cast into outer darkness, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Do you see how sins of omission also are met with extreme rejection? It is not only the covetous, the active doer of evil things and the adulterer, but also the one who fails to do good. Let us listen carefully then to these words. As we have opportunity, let us work to cooperate with our salvation. Let us get oil for our lamps. Let us labour to add to our talent. For if we are backward and spend our time in sloth here, no one will pity us any more hereafter, though we should wail ten thousand times.… Remember the virgins who again entreated and came to him and knocked, all in vain and without effect.”

-St John Chrysostom

Without doubt, when someone has loved God with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, he has the same reward of love as the person with a bigger heart or with a more gifted soul or with greater ability. This alone is required: At whatever level one has received a gift from God, one should use it for God’s glory.”

-Origen