Giving out of our Substance

Homily for Tuesday in the 11th Week of Ordinary Time

Someone did a social experiment and filmed it, posting it on Facebook. When a homeless person approached him for a handout, he gave the man a one hundred dollar bill. The people doing the experiment had arranged for someone to surreptitiously follow the beggar to find out what he did with the money. He went into a fast food restaurant and bought several bags of burgers and fries. Then he visited a number of other homeless people and gave them each a meal. The man who had originally given him the one hundred dollars caught up to him and asked why he had given the money away to others. His answer was simple. The other homeless people were just as hungry as he.

In today’s first reading, St. Paul tells a similar story about the Christian community in Macedonia. Though they were very poor, when they heard of other Christians in dire straits, they took what little they had and shared it with them. This particular story from St. Paul’s letters will be in the background of the rest of his Second Letter to the Corinthians which we will continue to read for the rest of this week.

Of course, such acts of charity are not the sole province of Christians. During their horrendous history of the Trail of Tears and the Indian Removal Act, the Choctaw Indians heard of the famine taking place in Ireland and through missionaries they sent money for famine relief to the Irish people. Given the terrible journey they were on thanks to the American government at the time, this was an act of outstanding generosity.

Some people will divide poor people into two groups – the deserving poor and those who are undeserving. Jesus tells us in the Gospel today that such distinctions don’t exist in the mind of God. God makes his sun rise on the bad and the good and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. If God’s love does not discriminate, then we should not discriminate.

This passage from the Gospel of St. Matthew ends with a familiar statement: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” How do we share God’s perfection? It seems the answer can be found in not discriminating among those whom we love or for whom we do good. There is much food for thought in this admonition.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M.