In such circumstances, I see myself as the fellow in the parable of the talents who received only one talent. The Land Owner tells him that the least he could have done, instead of burying the talent, was to give the talent to bankers so that it could collect interest. That’s me. I’m that fellow with the one talent. I cannot do what others do. I cannot invest and double my “talent of Grace,” as the hymns of Holy Week tell us to do. But I can at least do the least. That is, if I am going to break the fast because (well, because of any reason), then the least I can do is not give in completely to my craving: At least I can eat the cheese rather than the fish, or the fish rather than the chicken or the chicken rather than the steak. What is the least I can do? At least I can do that. And I have found that when I do this, when I offer to God the least, that God graciously accepts this.
I can imagine that some of you are screaming, or something inside you is screaming, “but we should give God our best, not our least.” And of course, you are right. But here’s the painful reality that we are not willing to accept about ourselves: often the least is our best. Best is not defined by the idealized picture we have in our head about ourselves. Best is defined by what we really are and what we really have and are able to do and offer God in the particular circumstances and reality of our life as it is, not as it should be or as we wish it were. What we really have to offer God comes from who we really are, not who we think we should be. And when we begin to offer to God the two widow’s mites of our reality, of who we really are, then we begin to really change. Then, I think, metamorphosis really begins. Up to this point everything has been getting us ready, ready to see ourselves as we are, ready to accept God’s love for us in our miserable condition, ready to offer to God, not what we should, but what we are.
And this experience, this movement from should to be, has been for me one of the more painful transitions of my spiritual life. And it is on going. I sometimes amaze myself at the depth of self delusion when I see anew the height of my arrogance, the breadth of my selfishness, and my unwavering good opinion of myself even in the face of daily, hourly, evidence to the contrary. Daily I have to return to myself. Daily I have to step out of the bushes naked before God. Daily I have to humble myself and offer to God the least, offer to God so very much less than what I should, so much less than I imagined I would. And yet, this is what I have and what I am. It’s not much, but at least what I have, what I am, at least this little bit I give to God. And God receives it, in his great love for mankind. And God receives it as he received the two copper coins of the widow. And God receives it, small as it is, taking the least and making it not just enough, but making it great, because that’s what God does.