“When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbours, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”
Excerpt, Gospel Reading, Monday 4th Nov. 2024 – LUKE 14:12-14.
So, the message from today’s teaching excerpted above is simple and clear, but replete with meanings.
As it has become our culture to veil our conceit behind this severally abused statement, “Accept my widow’s might.”
Therefore, when we host our contemporaries as well those ahead of us. We may have possibly broken the bank to create an impression, or just fetched from our ‘bottomless till’.
We lavish the table with sumptuous cuisines and parade the most expensive wines and spirits.
Then, we stand before our invitees as their host and lying to our guests as well as to ourselves, we once again implore that highly abused assertion – “Please manage my widow’s might.”
In today’s first reading, the Apostle Paul says, “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” – PHILIPPIANS 2:1-4.
Well, Christ isn’t saying when we throw a party, we shouldn’t invite our contemporaries. Far be it from that. We must, by all means, invite all of them, or as much as we can.
Nevertheless, Christ says, we must also give special invitations as well to those whom we know cannot pay us back.
Likewise, while it is good to give gifts and be generous to our contemporaries as well as those above us, we must also give gifts as well as be generous to those whom we are aware that they can’t return such favours.
And while at it, we must be weary of St Paul’s counsel☝️above. Therefore, we must implore the same humility and disposition we assumed while giving to those at the top when we give also to the poor.
Dear friend, there ate some generosity that we do that we immediately get our reward there and then. Then, we go beaming a wide smile from ear to ear.
Nevertheless, true generosity is quite different from philanthropy. Christ says of it, in today’s teaching that, we will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.
May God avail us the grace to permit His will to be realised in our life.
Have a fantastic day and a fulfilled week folks.
#SAINT_CHARLES_BORROMEO! #Blessed_Carlo_Acutis! #Pray_for_us!
-Akase F. Agabo
4th Nov. 2024.