We sometimes misunderstand our gifts and the place they have in God’s plan for our lives. We can do this in a number of ways.

Sometimes, for example, we imagine that we are talented in something that pleases us and that we have no ability whatsoever for anything else. This is never true.

Or we can rate our talents the way the world does—according to its usefulness, monetary value, and prestige. But in God’s eyes, our most important talents are those which help lead us to our final end—those through which we can express our love and service to others.

These include such things as a gift for human relations, a natural charity, and a clear intelligence. Athletic ability, by contrast, though adulated in our society, has very little to do with eternity.

We can also center our lives too much on our gifts. Some artists, for example, sacrifice themselves and everything and everybody else to their creative talent. This is placing self-expression before salvation, the ego before God.

There is, moreover, a distinction to be made between what we are called to do and what we would like to do.

If we are talented in some artistic or intellectual field, but God’s will places us in a situation in which we are tending children, scrubbing floors, peeling potatoes or chopping wood, we need not bemoan our lost opportunities.

By choosing God’s will, we have chosen the better part: we have preferred our highest talent, our talent for holiness, to shining before men.

When we clearly understand and accept this, bitterness and regret fall away, and we find peace.

Then, sometimes, something strange happens. When we have given up all hope of developing our special gifts, when we become reconciled to the idea of placing them in God’s hands to be used or not used as he chooses, a sudden opening, a change in our way of life, gives us an unexpected opportunity to enjoy and develop and make fruitful the very talents we have given up.

When this happens—and it is not rare—it is a joy to behold how much our talents have deepened and matured and assumed a deeper spiritual significance for having remained "three days" in the tomb of self-denial before the splendor of an unexpected resurrection.