"We are useless servants." These words of Jesus may strike us as rather negative and distinctly at odds with much else that He taught us. As always, we best understand such negative statements as challenges to deeper thinking, just as his positive and enlightening teaching also contains many great challenges.

We may paraphrase Jesus' words as: Do not take grace for granted. Paul [1Cor 4:7] reminds us that we do not have anything which has not been given us: all is grace and gift. Therefore it is we who must be grateful to God, not God who should be grateful to us. Preface IV for our ordinary weekday Eucharistic Prayer teaches us: "You have no need of our praise, yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift."

On a much deeper and perhaps somewhat mystical level, we should rejoice that we are indeed "useless" to God. "Use" is not a category to help us understand the mystery of creation. God created the sun, the air, water and the other things of nature for our use, but he did not create us for "use": the incredible and liberating wonder of our being is that God created us out of love and simply for love.