Pope Benedict: Use your talents and mission to do good

(November 14, 2011) Pope Benedict XVI used his Sunday ‘Angelus’ prayer to exhort people not to waste the talents and mission that God has entrusted to each one but to remain vigilant and do good. “God calls each person to life and bestows him with talents, while entrusting him with a mission to accomplish,” the Pope told the crowds gathered below his studio window in St. Peter’s Square to recite the midday Marian prayer with him. The Pope was reflecting on Sunday’s parable of the talents in Mathew’s Gospel. Pope Benedict said the passage should remind everybody of the “temporary nature of earthy existence,” given that “our final destiny” and “meaning of life” is “death followed by the Last Judgment.” The third servant lost sight of this, he said, and “behaved as if his master would not to return, as if there was not a day when he would ask him to account for his activities.” To refuse to use our gifts or embark on our mission would be falling short of the purpose of our existence. In this regard he recalled Pope Gregory the Great, who said that the primary virtue that needs to be preserved and enhanced throughout life is love -both love of friends and enemies. “If one lacks this virtue, he loses all good that he possessed; he is deprived of the talent he received and is thrown out, in darkness,” warned Pope Gregory. Later, speaking in English the Pope said that the words of Sunday’s Gospel call us to “an ever deeper conversion of mind and heart, and a more effective solidarity in the service of all our brothers and sisters.”
At the end of Sunday’s ‘Angelus', Pope Benedict XVI reminded the faithful about his pilgrimage to Benin this weekend saying it is aimed at bolstering faith and hope in Africa. The 84-year-old pope leaves on Friday on a three-day trip to the tiny west African nation to release the final document of the Special Synod of Bishops for Africa held in the Vatican in 2009. Speaking in French to pilgrims in St. Peter's Square, the Pope said he is making the voyage to ``reaffirm the faith and hope of the Christians of Africa.'' The Holy Father asked for prayers for both his pilgrimage and the people of Africa, especially those who suffer from violence and lack of security. He said he hoped the prayers will support the efforts of all those working for reconciliation, peace and justice.