The texts today from the Roman Catholic Lectionary offer
a milestone check for our spiritual journey. The wisdom literature from the
Book of Sirach probes our thanksgiving to God and, as Friar Jude Winkler notes,
encourages us to give as our interior conversion moves us. The tendency to
offer God a bribe wherein we commit to do or be in exchange for a Divine
intervention is moving away from the deeper relationship with God based on
surrender and trust in Love. The psalmist today gives voice to an imagined
dialogue on the nature of the sacrifice which is pleasing to God. Our lives
witness the depth of our commitment to giving. Our associations and habits tell
of the rewards which we take from our limited temporal existence. We are
invited to abandon the self serving and self satisfying path for the life which
Peter described to Jesus in the Gospel from Mark today. “Look, we have left everything and
followed you” (Mark 10.28:). Jesus acknowledges the action
of Peter and the others. He reminds them, as does Friar Jude, that the
Christian community is bringing them so much more of the deep relationships which
they remember from their past. Jesus mentions that they have come to understand
the value of suffering which strips away the superficial distractions of
society and unites them and us in the Life mission of Jesus. The
misinterpretation of this passage as the gospel of wealth wherein Jesus
miraculously takes some of our possessions and returns more possessions to us
in exchange is clearly not about living freed from slavery to things and people
who own us.
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