The gospel this Sunday is familiar to a lot of us. We tend to think it’s all about ability, or talent — what special gifts God has given you. Certainly, that’s a big part of it. But I think there is more to the parable of the talents than just a lesson in using your ability to sing or dance or juggle.

First, it’s important to remember that in Jesus’s day a talent was something concrete: it was an amount of money, a way of measuring something of great value. So he is speaking of something specific and very familiar to his audience.

But there is a second element in the parable: it is what you do with that most precious commodity.

Last year, Steve Martin published a memoir about his years as a standup comic, called “Born Standing Up.” It’s a wonderful read, and gives a lot of insight into where some of his most famous routines came from. Near the end of the book, looking back on that part of his life, he recalls a conversation with a painter friend of his, Eric Fischl. They were comparing psychoanalysis with the making of art. Both professions, they agreed, are similar because they require exploring the subconscious.

But Fischl added: “There is a fundamental difference between the two. In psychoanalysis, you try to retain a discovery. In art, once a thing has been made, you let it go.”

You let it go.

To my mind, that idea is central not just to the making of art – but to the spreading of the gospel. And that is what the parable of the talents is really about. It is taking the greatest treasure that God has given us – His word, His gospel, His message of salvation — and sharing it. Letting it go into the world.

Each of the servants who is given some talents does something with what he’s given. But the ones who prosper, who are rewarded, go out into the community. They share what they have been given. They exchange it. They barter. They invest it. They reap more with it.

In a sense, like an artist, they let it go.

But the servant who is punished hordes it. He keeps it to himself. Not only does he keep it to himself, he digs a hole and hides it in the earth, where no one can see it, and no one can find it, and it doesn’t appreciate in value.

What good does the gospel do any of us if we don’t live it?

What value does the gospel have to the world at large if we don’t give it away?

Friday night, I went out to Douglaston for a forum, sponsored by The Tablet, on Dorothy Day. And as part of it, they showed a documentary on her life called “Don’t Call Me a Saint.” The title comes from an interview she had with a journalist late in her life. The reporter called her a living saint. And she replied, “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.”

The movie is a remarkable testament to her life and work. Time and time again as I was watching it I thought to myself: “This is lived Christianity. This is what it is supposed to be.”

At one point, a woman in the film told the story of how the Catholic Worker set up its first hospitality house in the 1930s, at the height of the Depression.

One night, two homeless women came to the Catholic Worker looking for a place to stay, and Dorothy had to turn them away. They didn’t have room.

The next night, one of the women came back, again looking for a place to stay. Dorothy noticed her friend wasn’t with her, and she asked where she was. And the woman said, “We didn’t have anywhere to go, and she went to a subway station and threw herself under a train.”

Dorothy Day was stunned. That night, she collected whatever money she could, about five dollars, and went across the street where there was a small apartment available and put down a deposit for it. And that became the Catholic Worker’s first house of hospitality. There are now nearly 200 of them around the world.

Dorothy Day is an example of someone who didn’t just absorb Christ’s message of love. She took it. And lived it. And let it go. She invested it in the lives of others.

In a sense, that was her talent.

She bartered with the world, and shared it. And it grew.

The gospel makes clear that each of us has been given some kind of talent – some precious commodity. A gift rooted in the gospel.

It may be a talent for compassion.

A talent for prayer.

A talent for action.

A talent for joy.

A talent, even, for simply being present to another in a moment of need, or desperation, or pain.

These are more precious than gold. Each of us has these – and more – somewhere within our hearts. The message of this parable is: don’t bury them. Take them into the world and make them grow.

Steve Martin’s artist friend put his finger on a powerful idea about talent. And about Christian love.

The simple, beautiful fact is that each of us living the Christian life is involved in the making of art.

And each of us has to give it away. To let it go.

In the end, that is what makes a masterpiece.