OT XVIII [C] Eccl 1:2; 2:21-23; Col 3:1-5, 9-11; Lk 12:13-21

 

The making of a will is one of the important acts of adulthood. We can be rather reluctant to sit down and make our will. To do so is to acknowledge in a very concrete way that we are mortal, that one day we will leave our possessions to others. The author of the book of Qoheleth saw this as part of the meaninglessness of life – ‘a person who has laboured, must leave what is his own to someone who has not toiled for it at all’. Yet, there can be great meaning in the act of leaving what is our own to those who have not laboured for it. In making our will, we are deciding how our earthly possessions at the time of death will be divided and distributed. The decisions we make in regard to our will speak volumes about who and what we really value in life. We leave our possessions to the people and the causes that are most significant to us. Our will is a statement of our loves and passions, our values and interests.

When a will is not made or when it is unclear, trouble very often ensues, as family members attempt to interpret what the deceased person really intended. Non-family members can easily get drawn into the family quarrel. In the gospel reading today, someone tries to draw Jesus into a family dispute about inheritance. A man comes up to Jesus and says, ‘Master, tell my brother to give me a share of our inheritance’. Wisely, Jesus does not get involved in this family dispute. Instead, he seizes on this man’s request to warn against the dangers of greed. Within the Christian tradition, greed is listed as one of the seven deadly sins. It appears second on the list of seven: Pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth. Greed is the desire to acquire more than we need or is good for us. When we give in to greed, we invariably do damage not only to ourselves but to others as well.

In the gospel reading, Jesus tells a story about a greedy man whose heart is not open because it is full of anxiety about the safe storage of all he possesses. His hands and his heart are full. He forgot the truth that God was the real owner of all his possessions and blessings, and he was only God’s steward or manager. Instead, he was focused on himself and was selfish to the core. He liberally used the “aggressively possessive” pronouns “I” (six times) and “my” (five times). He was possessed by his possessions, instead of possessing them. In the process, he evicted God from his heart and never thought to thank God for having blessed him with a rich harvest. He was not thankful to God for His blessings; instead, he considered them as solely the fruit of his own labor. He also failed in his stewardship duties – the returning to God of His portion in paying his tithe. He did not recognize his possessions as on loan from God, given to him to share with others.  He was starving to death spiritually in the midst of God’s abundance.  

The rich man was called a fool because he did not consider sharing his wealth. In other words, he left other people out of his possessions. St. Gregory the Great taught that when we care for the needs of the poor, we are giving them what is theirs, not ours. We are not just performing works of mercy; we are paying a debt of justice.

Henry Ford once asked an associate about his life goals. The man replied that his goal was to make a million dollars. A few days later, Ford gave the man a pair of glasses made out of two silver dollar coins. He told the man to put them on and asked what he could see. “Nothing,” the man said. “The dollars are in the way.” — Ford told him that he wanted to teach him a lesson: If his only goal was dollars, he would miss a host of greater opportunities. He should invest himself in serving others, not simply in making money. That’s a great secret of life that far too few people discover. Money is important. No question about that. But money is only a means by which we reach higher goals – loving service to others, loving obedience to God. 

There is a saying that "If you want to know what a man is, find out where he invests his money." It is a metaphorical way of saying that a person's values and priorities can be revealed by observing how they allocate their resources, particularly their financial investments. It implies that a person's investment choices reflect their goals, risk tolerance, and what they deem important. Some people keep buying new cars every year, because there is a new model in the market, or their neighbour has a better model than the one they have. It is not that they really need a new one.

The gospel reading invites us to ask ourselves, ‘What are we doing with the resources that have come our way?’ ‘Are we using them to invest in others or to invest in ourselves?’ Our resources include not just our possessions, but our time, our health, our gifts and abilities. In various ways, each one of us has been richly endowed by the Lord; it is in placing those resources at the service of others that we become rich in the sight of God and, thereby, secure our lives.

Let me conclude with the beautiful prayer from the book of Proverbs: “Lord, give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonour the name of my God.” (Prv 30:8-9).

 

 

 

 OT XVII [C] Gn 18:20-32, Col  2:12-14, Lk 11:1-13 

 

We are all probably aware of the influence for good or ill we can have on other people and other people can have on us. Some people can bring out the best in us, and others can bring out the worst in us. We all need the good living of others to help us to live well, and others need our good living if they are to live well.

During his public ministry, Jesus’ disciples were deeply influenced by the way he lived, his vision for human life, and his relationship with God. They wanted to follow him, to become like him. They noticed, for example, how Jesus prayed to God. He seemed to have a very intimate relationship with God. They wanted a share of that relationship. They wanted to pray to God as he did. So, they requested him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray’.

In teaching the Lord’s prayer, Jesus was not only teaching them a prayer, but also the approach they should have in their prayers. Jesus first invites us to address God in the same intimate way as he did, as ‘Abba, Father’ and he empowers us to do so by sending us the Holy Spirit. As Paul writes to the Galatians, ‘God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying “Abba, Father!”’ (Gal 4:6).

Jesus then teaches us that our primary focus in prayer is to be on God rather than on ourselves. After praying to have God’s name glorified and for the coming of God’s kingdom to be established on earth, we pray for our own needs and those of others. We should be persevering just like Abraham was in his prayer to intercede for the good people in the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, or like the man who went to his neighbour’s house at night to ask bread to feed his visiting guest.

I am sure we have all had the experience of asking God for something important in prayer and not getting the response we had hoped for. We end up with the feeling that the Lord isn’t listening to us. We might ask that a loved one recover from a serious illness, but it doesn’t happen. At that point, we might find ourselves praying the prayer that Jesus prayed from the cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’

Saint Paul, in one of his letters, tells us that he had prayed for something but was not answered in the way he hoped for. He had what he calls a ‘thorn in the flesh’. He never fully explains what this ‘thorn in the flesh’ is, but it was clearly something that caused him a lot of distress, and he wanted to be rid of it.

Though his ‘thorn in the flesh’ didn’t leave him, his prayer did not go completely unanswered. He heard the Lord say to him in prayer, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’

Prayers that don’t seem to be answered are often being answered in ways that we very often don’t see at the time. If we keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, the Lord will respond to our prayers in ways that will surprise us. What we ask the Lord to change may not change, but we will be changed for the better. Sometimes, the Lord answers our prayers not by changing the situation outside ourselves but by changing ourselves, changing our hearts and minds. We might receive the grace of acceptance, the gift of a deep peace; we might be helped to see the situation in a way we never saw it before. Very often, God will give us even more than we ask for. At the end of today’s gospel reading, Jesus says, ‘how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him’. Jesus is saying that if we come before God in our need, asking him for help, he will share the life of the Spirit with us.

A certain lady who spent her time working for the Lord – visiting the sick and the bedridden, helping the elderly and the handicapped – was diagnosed with a knee problem needing surgery. The surgery, unfortunately, was not a success, and so left her in constant pain and unable to walk. It seemed that the Lord had ignored the prayers of this woman and her friends for a successful surgery. This was a woman who considered herself a personal friend of Jesus. She was utterly disappointed, and her cheerful disposition turned into sadness and gloom. One day, she pulled herself together and shared with her confessor what was going on in her soul. The confessor suggested that she go into prayer and ask her friend Jesus why he has treated her this way. And she did. The following day, the priest met her and saw peace written all over her face in spite of her pain. “Do you know what he said to me?” she began, “As I was looking at the crucified Jesus and telling him about my bad knee, he said to me, ‘Mine is worse.’” She was given the gift of the Holy Spirit.

 

The prayer of intercession that we have after the creed has a strong foundation in the prayer of Abraham in today’s first reading. He was praying not for his family, but for the people he did not even know. In the prayer Our Father, too, we do not pray Give me this day my daily bread, but Give US this day our daily bread. We pray these petitions not as individuals but as a community. The vision of Jesus in this prayer extends beyond the community of believers. As a community of faith, we pray this prayer in the world, as part of the world, on behalf of the world. So, when we pray, ‘give us this day our daily bread’, we are asking God to satisfy the physical hungers and spiritual hungers of all humanity. Just for your information, it is only the Christians who pray for non-Christians and for the rest of humanity. The Muslims even call upon Allah to curse the Jews and Christians in their daily prayers. In our petitions, we usually include prayers for the whole world and our nation, besides praying for the universal and local churches. In our Good Friday prayer, we have special petitions for Jews, Muslims, Hindus and people of all other religions. This should open our minds to see that we have the true God who is the creator of all the world and redeemed the whole world and is concerned not just with Christians but with the whole of humanity, which is His creation. In this prayer Lord’s prayer, Jesus urges us to see that we stand not as I, as an individual, but we as a community placed on a lampstand giving light to the rest of humanity, giving out rays of truth, love and peace. Today, when we pray the Our Father prayer, let’s have these thoughts in our minds. 

 OT XVI [C] Gn 18:1-10a; Col 1:24-28; Lk 10:38-42

 

A true story is told by an advertising executive at Reader’s Digest, who found her emptiness filled in by prayer, listening to God, as Mary did in today’s Gospel.  In spite of her successful career, she had felt emptiness in her life. One morning, during a breakfast meeting with her marketing consultant, she mentioned that emptiness. “Do you want to fill it?” her colleague asked. “Of course, I do,” she said. He looked at her and replied, “Then start each day with an hour of prayer.” She looked at him and said, “Don, you’ve got to be kidding. If I tried that, I’d go off my rocker.” Don smiled and said, “That’s exactly what I did 20 years ago.” The woman left the restaurant in turmoil. Begin each morning with prayer? Begin each morning with an hour of prayer? Absolutely out of the question! Yet, the next morning she found herself doing exactly that. And she’s been doing it ever since.  This woman is the first to admit that it has not always been easy. There have been mornings when she was filled with great peace and joy. But there have been other mornings when she was filled with nothing but weariness. And it was on these weary mornings that she remembered something else that her marketing consultant said. “There will be times when your mind just won’t go into God’s sanctuary. That’s when you spend your hour in God’s waiting room. Still, you’re there, and God appreciates your struggle to stay there.” 

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is offered hospitality by two women. It is said of Martha that she welcomed Jesus to her house. Martha’s way of showing hospitality was to roll up her sleeves and to prepare an elaborate meal, apparently in a rather anxious frame of mind. Her anxious activity seems to have left her rather angry with her sister, Mary, whom she perceived not to be carrying her weight sufficiently. She comes across as angry with Jesus too, for not giving Mary a telling off, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister is leaving me to do the serving all by myself? Please, tell her to help me.’

I think many of us find it easy to identify with Martha. We can all feel a bit put upon from time to time. We sense that if only so-and-so would pull his or her weight a bit more, our life would be a lot easier.

 Mary was showing Jesus a different kind of hospitality from Martha. She was sitting at his feet, listening to what Jesus had to say. She wanted to hear what he had to say. Rather than being overly anxious about nourishing Jesus, she was trying to nourish herself on his word.

 

Jesus validated the kind of hospitality that Mary was showing him, the hospitality of attentive listening, the hospitality of presence, rather than of anxious activity. On this occasion, it seems that this was the kind of hospitality that Jesus actually desired, ‘Mary has chosen the better part’.

Martha may have felt that she was the only one to be serving Jesus, but Jesus wanted Martha to see that Mary was serving him in a different way, just by sitting at his feet and listening to him. We can serve people in different ways. There is the service of speech and the service of silence. There is the service of activity and the service of listening quietly. There is great value in both forms of service.

There are times when the best way to express our love for someone is to offer them the service of quiet listening. It seems that when Jesus entered the house of Martha and her sister Mary, this was the form of service that he needed. He had something to say, there was a word he needed to speak, and he needed and wanted someone to listen, and it was Mary who recognized that. What Jesus wanted on this occasion was the hospitality of presence more than the hospitality of anxious activity. When Martha criticized her sister to Jesus, Jesus suggested that Martha may have something to learn from her sister.

 

 We all need the wisdom to recognize what time it is when it comes to our relationship with others. What is love asking of me at this time?

It is a well-known fact that those who are in the caring professions, like doctors, nurses, pastors, social workers, and even parents, often suffer from burnout and terminal exhaustion as Martha did.  People suffering from burnout often end up angry, anxious, and worried. Hence, occasionally we need to put aside the work we do for the Lord in serving others and just spend some time being with Him, talking to Him and listening to Him, fully aware of His holy presence in our souls. We may do the recharging of our spiritual energy also by our personal and family prayers, by meditative reading of the Bible and by participating in the celebration of the Holy Mass. Christian husbands and wives should develop “couple spirituality” and seek more opportunities to pray together. The Martha and Mary episode teaches us the need for balance between service and prayer and the need for spending time with the Lord, learning from Him and recharging our spiritual batteries with the power of the Holy Spirit. May the Lord who received Martha’s serving and Mary’s attentive presence, give us the grace to serve the Lord and be served by him at this Mass by precious body and blood.   

 OT XIV [C]:  Is 66:10-14c; Gal 6:14-18; Lk 10: 1-12, 17-20

 

Most of us may have heard of Helen Keller, who was born in the U.S. towards the end of the 19th century, and she lived until the 1960s. In the first months of her life, she fell ill, as a result of which she was left without hearing and sight for the rest of her life. Her speech was also severely impaired. Yet, with the help of several gifted people, including a woman called Ann Sullivan, Helen went on to become a great communicator. Miss Sullivan worked hard to get Helen to identify objects she could touch by tracing the name of the object on Helen’s hand, for example, pouring water on her hands and then tracing the word ‘water’ on the back of her hand. Eventually, Helen began to build up a vocabulary in her head. She made great efforts to learn to speak, but her speech never really improved beyond the sounds that only Anne and others very close to her could understand. Yet, Helen went on to write several books with Anne’s help. After her time spent at College, she went on lecture tours, speaking of her experiences and beliefs to enthralled crowds, with Anne interpreting what she said, sentence by sentence.

 

Helen was once asked: ‘If you had only one wish granted, what would you ask for?’ Everyone believed that she would ask for the gift of sight or hearing for herself. Instead, she replied simply, ‘I would ask for world peace’. Her answer reveals a woman who was anything but self-absorbed. Given the restrictions under which she lived, she had good reason to be self-absorbed. Yet, her vision and concerns obviously went far beyond herself. She wanted not so much for herself but for others, especially for those who were suffering the effects of war and hostility.

The question, ‘If you had only one wish granted, what would you ask for’ is one that has the potential to be very revealing. The way we answer that question can reveal a lot about us. It’s a question that makes us reflect on what it is that really matters to us, what it is we value most deeply.

For disciples of Jesus, the coming of God’s kingdom is to be their primary wish, their deepest prayer. Jesus once said to his disciples, ‘Seek first the kingdom of God’.

 When Jesus sent out the seventy-two on mission, he told them not to greet anyone along the way.” (See also 2 Kings 4:29). This instruction implies that the mission was so urgent that nothing should divert the disciples from it. 

 

It is only Luke who tells us that Jesus sent out this large group of seventy-two. The harvest was rich, and many labourers were needed. Indeed, Jesus’ call on the seventy-two was to ask God to send out even more labourers into the harvest. Not even seventy-two would be enough; the Lord’s work needs many hands. The Lord needs us all if his work is to get done. The seventy-two were sent out to prepare places where the Lord intended to go. Jesus intends to go to every town and village in the world, not just to the 36 he sent them. The Lord is constantly sending us out ahead of him to prepare for his coming. The Lord needs us if others are to experience his coming. The primary way that the Lord comes to others is through us, his followers. When the Lord sent out the seventy-two as his ambassadors, he sent them out in pairs. It was together that they could bring the Lord to others. In a similar way today, the Lord does not send us out alone. If we are to do the Lord’s work, if the Lord is to do his work through us, we need to go forth with others. The Lord’s work is more likely to get done when we are working in communion with others. If you look at any parish, you will find that all of the ministries that are serving people well are being carried out by people working together. The Lord works best through people who work together, who give of their gifts to each other and who receive from each other’s gifts. One of the reasons why the Lord sent out his followers in twos was that he saw them as lambs among wolves. Because when they would be facing hostile environments, they would need the support of one another. In trying to witness to the Lord’s values and outlook today, we too will often feel a little bit like lambs among wolves. The culture and society in which we live are not always supportive of the Lord and his message. That is why, as disciples of the Lord, we need to work together, and why the Lord continues to send us out two by two, if not three by three or four by four. Today, more than ever, we need to support each other within the church.

When we live a true Christian life we would have the courage to invite people of other faiths to our faith. If we do not live a genuine Christian life, we will lack the courage to do that. A recent survey asked the question, “Why do adults join the Catholic Church in spite of the scandals publicized in the media?”  Seventy-five per cent of the new adult converts to the Catholic Church reported that they were attracted by a personal invitation from a Catholic who had a lively relationship with Christ and his Church. 

 

The missionaries were to offer the Lord to everyone, regardless of how they were received. That is part of our calling also. How people relate to us should not determine how we relate to them.  We witness to the Lord, even when that witness is not appreciated. In that sense, our faithfulness to the Lord matters more to him than how successful our labour is. They were to rejoice not in the positive outcome of their mission but, rather, in their relationship with the Lord. It is as if Jesus was saying to them that the Lord of the harvest matters more than the harvest of the Lord.

 

Today’s Gospel reminds us that we, the 2.5 billion Christians in the world today, have the mission of the 72 to preach the Gospel of Christ to the rest of the world’s 4.5 billion non-Christians. As faithful Christians, we should attract others to the Faith by leading exemplary lives, just as a rose silently attracts people by its beauty and fragrance. This is our job and our responsibility.

May the good Lord who sent out the 72 and gave them the power and strength to preach the kingdom of God also give us the desire and strength to witness to the Kingdom of God always and everywhere.