Servant or Child?

Servant or Child?

There is a quiet difference that runs through the whole spiritual life.

It does not show up in speeches, nor in well-organized doctrines.

It shows up in the way we live.

Tradition tends to form us as servants.

The Spirit forms us as children.

The servant obeys out of fear.

The child responds out of trust.

The servant tries not to make mistakes.

The child learns to live.

Maybe the big question is not whether we are right,

but where we are living from.

In the parable of the talents, a servant receives a sum and does something that seems prudent: he hides it, buries it and returns it intact.

And the justification is simple: “I was afraid.”

Fear is a typical language of the servant.

He lives trying not to lose, trying not to be guilty, trying to protect himself.

That is why he chooses the safest place: the dust of the earth.

Burying in the dust is the human way of saying:

“I prefer to preserve rather than to live.”

“I do not trust enough to set this in motion.”

But the life governed by the Spirit was not made to be preserved.

It was made to grow.

There is something very present among us today: what many call the spiral of silence.

Tradition does not need to forbid or persecute.

It is enough to convince us that it is better not to speak, not to dare, not to expose ourselves, not to move from our place.

And so, little by little, the gifts keep existing,

but they stop being manifested.

Here it is worth saying clearly:

Tradition makes us servants.

The Spirit makes us children.

Scripture does not speak of theory, but of the manifestation of the Spirit.

Something that appears. Something that can be seen. Something that bears fruit.

Buried gifts do not bear fruit.

And fruit is what honors the name of God.

Jesus also said that life under the rule of the Spirit is like the leaven that a woman hid in the dough.

Here, hiding is not fear. It is method.

The leaven is not buried so that it will not act.

It is put inside to transform everything from within.

The action of the Spirit begins quietly,

but never ends quietly.

The servant's hiding paralyzes.

The Spirit's hiding transforms.

Jesus also spoke of a man who found a pearl of great value and sold everything he had to buy it.

He did not sell everything because he became radical.

He sold everything because he saw.

And when life comes to be governed by the Spirit, we discover that what needs to be sold is not always things.

Sometimes it is weights.

And among these weights there is one of the most persistent:

the sin of not believing.

Not believing paralyzes.

Not believing calls fear prudence.

Not believing buries gifts and calls it maturity.

That is why Paul said something simple and final:

“I believed, therefore I spoke.”

He did not say: “I understood, therefore I spoke.”

Nor: “I was certain, therefore I spoke.”

He said: I believed, so I spoke.

A living faith does not end in beautiful silence.

It ends in manifestation.

In the end, maybe the question is not about talents, gifts or words.

Maybe it is about me:

Am I living as a servant... or as a child?