[ Today's Readings ]
If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic,
hand him your cloak as well.
Should anyone press you into service for one mile,
go with him for two miles.
Give to the one who asks of you,
and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.
We are called to give of our goods and even of our selves selves freely. Our lives are not our own anymore, now that we have been bought with the Precious Blood of Jesus (see First Corinthians 6:20). This means we must glorify him with all that we have and all that we do. We are his to give away.
But what of stability? How can we really build a life when at any moment we might be called to give it all away or to pick up for a journey? We are not called to be irresponsible in giving, necessarily. Subsidiarity applies. We are not called to give to a stranger if it means that our son or daughter will starve. We start close to home and spread our love out in ever widening concentric circles. And the home itself, starting with each of us, must be stable for this to work.
If we have a vineyard which is our ancestral heritage and the king asks, well, he doesn't need it and we do. That's fine. The thing to remember is that even if we don't give it to the king we still must treat it as God's vineyard and not our own. We must be sufficiently detached from it that if giving it away is ever asked of us we are able. We must be in the world but not of it. We must have the things of the world as though not possessing them. In short, we must be poor in spirit. We begin to realize how the idyllic descriptions of early Christian life could actually be true.
And all who believed were together and had all things in common.
So of what is God calling us to let go today? What is he calling us to hold more loosely? Let us here him and cling instead to he himself. Compared to him, all the rest is garbage.
Hearken to my words, O LORD,
attend to my sighing.
Heed my call for help,
my king and my God!
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