It is God’s nature is to create and to be copious as the first chapter of Genesis reveals. He fills the heavens and the earth with a delight in multiplicity and variety: “Let the earth bring forth living creatures each according to their kinds.” God’s creation teems with abundance and diversity, a world of “pied beauty” to cite the title of Hopkins’s famous poem that praises God’s unlimited generosity and glorifies God for the profusion of “dappled things” that fill earth and sky: “He fathers forth whose beauty is past change.” God directs all living creatures to be fruitful and also enjoins man and woman to be fertile and increase as the familiar words to Adam and Eve testify: “Be fruitful and multiply”. Sowing and reaping inform the law of nature that produces the bountifulness of the earth and the procreation of the human race. All plant, animal, and human life is ordered toward the reproduction of the species.
In the parable of the talents the master expected some form of return or profit from the investment of money he loaned to the servants. While the first servant who received five talents returned with the gain of five additional talents and the second servant with two talents also returned with a gain and earned praise (“Well done, good and faithful servant”), the third servant who buried his talent in the ground angered his master because he failed to produce any increase or earn any interest. “You wicked and slothful servant,” he reprimands his lazy servant who lacked the initiative to use his time, opportunities, and gifts to multiply his profits. Likewise, when Christ saw a fig tree without fruit, it withered when he commanded, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” God displays stern anger at those who receive but do not give or have talents but do nothing with the gifts, graces, and opportunities offered to them.
Thus, men and women are accountable to God for the blessings He bestows. What have they accomplished with the gift of life they received from their Creator? What have they achieved with the love, care, and education of their families that nurtured their lives? Where are the spiritual and corporal works of mercy? Have they been fruitful and generous with life in their marriages? Are they sources of grace to other people and show friendship, hospitality, kindness, and love of neighbor? Are their homes places of welcome, graciousness, and mirth to all who visit? How many lives have they touched? How will they answer the question “How much have you loved?”
Every person possesses assets either in the form of skills, knowledge, material goods, fortune, or opportunities that are intended for the benefit of others and designed for sharing and multiplying the goodness and joy of life. Honest self-examination of conscience takes stock of what a person inherits at the beginning of life and what a person bequeaths at the end of his days. The gift of life is a treasure meant to be invested to yield a return. But it can be wasted like the extravagance of the prodigal son, or it can be hoarded like the servant who hid his talent. To be fruitful and multiply means to produce surpluses, enough to enjoy and share and say “My cup runneth over.”
But modern man hardly produces and hardly shares. This great teaching of the Bible falls on those with ears who do not hear. As Patrick Buchanan’s The Death of the West argues, Western civilization is dying in Europe and America because man is not multiplying and becoming fruitful: the average size of families in the West is 1.4, not even the minimum 2.1 needed for the new generation to replace the old. The gift of marriage is sadly wasted as the culture of no-fault divorce or practice of cohabitation frustrates the fruitfulness of love that marriage produces for individuals, children, and societies.
The sixty million abortions in America since 1973 have destroyed all the assets and gifts that human beings–the greatest of all resources–offer to the world. The autonomous individual who lives only for self, pleasure and comfort—not for the sake of wife, children, and family– also wastes his talents. Living only for transitory goods, he eats, drinks, and is merry only for the moment but never profits his soul or enriches others. By ignoring the divine teaching that man is created to produce, multiply, and imitate God in his generosity, modern man, then, impoverishes himself instead of producing profits, making interest, and creating abundance–God’s divine plan when He created the world and made man.
The measure of a person’s life depends on his legacy. Did he live and die for nothing, one unknown and uncherished, or will he be missed and remembered for his life’s work, his moral character, his devotion to family, his educational influence, and his accomplishments on behalf of others? Just as the farmer sows in order to reap and the artist makes in order to contemplate the beauty of his handiwork, every person needs the assurance that he did not live in vain–some validation of his contribution to others and to the world. In Willa Cather’s Death Comes to the Archbishop Jean Latour looks back at his missionary work in the American Southwest and compares the first years of his work as bishop to his last years as a retired priest and sees an abundant harvest.
All around him he sees the fruit of his labor in all the improvements he has brought to the Mexicans and Indians in that part of the world. In an arid land where no one cultivated gardens and fruit trees, the Bishop taught the natives how to grow vegetables and improve their diet: “Wherever there was a French priest, there should be a garden of fruit trees and vegetables and flowers.” In a land of ugly church architecture, the Bishop found benefactors to erect a beautiful cathedral, “the first Romanesque church in the New World.” In a culture where the Mexicans did not live their faith or only “played” with their religion with no sense of seriousness, the Bishop was “a great harvester of souls” who instilled discipline, order, and responsibility into their disordered lives ruled by sloth and indifference. In a world where Indian superstitions ruled and worship of false gods dictated child sacrifice, the Bishop brought the light of truth to conquer the darkness of ignorance. Christ’s infallible test, “By their fruits you shall know them,” is always the true measure of a person’s life.
One experience in particular especially validates all of the Bishop’s efforts to produce fruit in a barren land. When he comes into the church on a cold December night, he finds an old Mexican woman, a slave to American Protestants, forbidden to enter a Catholic church by her master. He sees her fall on her knees, kiss the feet of the Holy Mother’s statue, and shed tears the entire time as she cries, “Nineteen years, Father, nineteen years since I have seen the holy things of the altar!” The Bishop’s vocation has brought living water to this poor woman thirsting for God. As Bishop Latour ponders his life in his old age, he sees the fruitfulness of his life’s work and experiences a profound peacefulness that prepares him for a happy death. A fruitful life according to God’s plan moves the heart to say, in Bishop Latour’s famous words, “I shall not die of a cold, my son, I shall die of having lived.”
Mitchell Kalpakgian, Ph.D. has completed fifty years of teaching beginning as a teaching assistant at the University of Kansas, continuing as a professor of English at Simpson College in Iowa for thirty-one years, and recently teaching part-time at various schools and college in New Hampshire. As well as contributing to a number of publications, he has published seven books: The Marvelous in Fielding’s Novels, The Mysteries of Life in Children’s Literature, The Lost Arts of Modern Civilization, An Armenian Family Reunion (a collection of short stories), Modern Manners: The Poetry of Conduct and The Virtue of Civility, and The Virtues We Need Again. He has designed homeschooling literature courses for Seton Home School, and he also teaches online courses for Fisher More College and Fisher More Academy.
