A Book Review . . . Using Ten Talents To Reap A Spiritual Harvest

By MITCHELL KALPAKGIAN

Unearthing Your Talents: A Thomistic Guide to Spiritual Growth by Kevin Vost (Sophia Institute Press, Manchester, NH: 2009); 241 pp. $19.95. Available through www.SophiaInstitute.com or 1-800-888-9344.

Inspired by Christ’s parable of the talents (Matt. 25:20-21) and informed by the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, Dr. Kevin Vost presents selects ten talents that all persons can use, invest, and multiply to reap a rich spiritual harvest in their personal lives. Selecting seven natural virtues and three theological virtues as the God-given talents for all people to utilize in their lives, Vost explains clearly and carefully how they develop the power of the intelligence, order the passions and appetites, and cultivate the works of love.
Applying the parable of the talents most aptly and originally to the moral and spiritual life, the author shows how the prudent, practical use of these talents leads to love of neighbor and love of God and forms holy souls fit for Heaven.
Beginning with the virtue of understanding, one of the talents of learning and one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit that Aquinas defines as “the knowledge that penetrates to the heart of things,” Vost explains that the five senses by themselves do not provide this insight — the ability to discern universal truths and make sense of the information provided by the powers of seeing and hearing.
Understanding allows the mind to see and know what the eye alone cannot see. It penetrates into the core of reality, its interior forms or the essences of things so that the data of the senses lead to some unified knowledge about the unchanging, eternal nature of things, grasping even the reality of God. When the Holy Spirit’s gift of understanding assists the virtue of understanding, according to Aquinas, the fruit is “the certitude of faith.” For example, understanding grasps the universal truth that all human beings are created in the image of God.
While the virtue of understanding comprehends the underlying principles or unchanging nature of things and universal truths, the virtue of science, the second talent of learning, deduces causes and effects not just in the scientific sense but also the moral realm. While fire is the cause of smoke, pride is the beginning of sin.
Science is the talent that thinks logically in a process of step-by-step sequential reasoning (A equals B; B equals C; therefore, A equals C).
It asks the question “why” and considers the underlying purpose or final cause of something. For example, why did God create man? What is the purpose of marriage?
The virtue of wisdom, the third of the intellectual talents, gives the ability to make good judgments, vital distinctions, and thoughtful discernments. Quoting Aristotle, Vost cites as a mark of wisdom the ability to distinguish between excellence and mediocrity: “It is better to know a little about sublime things, than much about mean things.” Wisdom never rests in dividing a subject into knowledge of its many parts like molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles, but strives to see the whole and “looks for reasons and meanings and purposes, as well as the causes and effects.”
Citing Aquinas, Vost clarifies an important distinction: “whereas the gift of understanding pertains to matters of perception, the gift of wisdom pertains to matters of judgment.” Wisdom, then, serves a practical purpose, as Vost argues, and is intended “to be used” in the ordinary business of life.
Aquinas’ formulation of the idea clarifies that wisdom contemplates God’s teachings and then “judges of human acts by divine things, and directs things according to divine rules.” For example, wisdom distinguishes between necessities and luxuries and does not go into debt for unnecessary purchases. Wisdom does not judge the meaning or purpose of marriage by worldly standards or Supreme Court decisions but by God’s divine teaching: “What God has joined together, let no man rend asunder.”
The second part of the book examines the talents of living, otherwise known as the four cardinal virtues. For example, fortitude moderates and controls fear and anger, fights the enemies of justice, masters the temptation of irascibility and listlessness, and leads to the golden mean of righteous anger.
Other facets of this virtue are the qualities of Cicero’s “great souled man”: the nobility of magnanimity, the generosity of magnificence, the strength of patience, and the endurance of perseverance.
Vost cites the Christian knight as the epitome of the many facets of fortitude, encompassing passion for justice, service to the weak and the oppressed, and the love of sacrifice: “If only we could reignite that beautiful amalgam of magnanimity and humility once embodied in the medieval concept of chivalry.”
Fortitude, the gift of the Holy Spirit, refines the virtue of fortitude by infusing supernatural grace “to endure tasks beyond our purely human endurance, as the holy martyrs would attest” and to attune man more to God’s inspirations and promptings. For example, fortitude never compromises moral principles for political expediency or ignores sublime ethical ideals like the right to life to win popular approval.
The talent of temperance lifts man’s pursuit of pleasure beyond animal instincts and carnal appetite. Contrary to modern belief that temperance inhibits enjoyment and frustrates pleasure, Vost forcefully explains that the classical and Thomistic understanding of temperance does not repress desire for legitimate, rational delights of the body but directs the desires to partake of the pleasures that conform to a moral, spiritual being: “Temperance seeks not to destroy pleasure, but to remove our desires from the pleasures that would destroy us.”
Temperance, he adds, cultivates shame-facedness, a sense of revulsion for what Aquinas calls “the horror of whatever is disgraceful.”
To combat lust, Aquinas offers this valuable wisdom that Vost culls: instead of preoccupation with the parts of the body like the hair, eyes, lips, clothing, style, and all the visual images that arouse desire, a man must resist the temptation to dwell on a particular part of the body:
“Hence, the most effective remedy against intemperance is not to dwell on the consideration of particulars” but to see woman as wife, mother, sister, and daughter and thus abstract the soul from the body.
The talent of temperance is a potent medicine to conquer the addiction to pornography so prevalent among men with easy access through the Internet.
Part three addresses the talents of loving, the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity. Using Aquinas’ distinction between charity and hope as acts of the will and faith as an act of intellect, Vost dispels the notion of faith as some vague feeling. True belief, though not knowledge of the senses or a process of deduction, is real knowledge “akin to the certainty that we obtain with science and understanding” because belief in God acknowledges hiddenness and mystery as aspects of the of divine nature that eye cannot see but the mind can know.
According to Aquinas, the supernatural virtues, unlike the cardinal virtues, do not reach their perfection as some golden mean between excess and defect but grow in depth and fervor. Vost elaborates, “St. Thomas compares the love of charity to the heat of a powerful furnace,” and “each act of charity increases within us the disposition or tendency for more charitable acts.”
Charity, like all spiritual goods that have no limits, overflows and suffers no depletion. This supernatural virtue proclaims that there is no such thing as an unwanted child or a useless human being.

The Glory Of God

These ten talents, then, are ordered to cultivating the virtues and habits of the moral life that require knowing, living, and loving. God does not leave man impoverished or destitute but provides natural powers, allows voluntary choices, and infuses supernatural virtues for man to invest and use to earn profit, make interest, and produce a harvest.
As the parable shows, the master expects some yield or fruit, whether the talents are one, five, or ten, and the master expresses stern anger at the wasting or misusing of God-given talents:
“You wicked and slothful servant. . . . Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest.”
Man’s mind, will, and heart are designed to know the true, to choose the good, and to love neighbor and God — a purpose that Origen, one of the Church fathers, succinctly expresses in an apt quotation that Vost cites as the spirit of his excellent, especially thorough book: “For all that is required is that whatever a man has from God, he should use it all to the glory of God.”