8th Week, Tuesday, Mar 4th:
Ecclesiasticus 35:1-12 / Mark 10:28-31
The just man's sacrifice is most pleasing: It will never be forgotten.
A new ministry is arising among shut-ins and retired people. It's called the Prison Pen Pal Program. Charles Colson, the former Nixon aide who was imprisoned in the Watergate scandal, refers to it in his book Loving God. There he describes an elderly woman in a Georgia nursing home. Even though writing a letter is a task for her, she keeps up a steady flow of correspondence with 14 prison inmates. All of them, she says, are young men who need grand-mothering and the wisdom of a grandmother's years.
The sacrifice this elderly woman makes to carry on her ministry is great, but the good she does is far greater. God will not forget it, and her reward in heaven will be great.
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What "creative" sacrifice are we making— or are we willing to make—to help others? "The only gift is a portion of yourself."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“Honour the Lord with generosity... Add a smiling face to all your gifts” says the first reading. The advice of Ben Sirach is for honest persons to thank God by offering sacrifices, but God will not accept sacrifices from dishonest people, for he accepts no bribes.
What about those who give up everything for the sake of the kingdom of heaven? They will not only “inherit heaven” but find happiness on earth in the freedom from worries about losing material goods and the inner freedom of belonging to all, in the joy of winning many brothers and sisters in the community. And curiously enough but realistically, Mark adds that they will retain their happiness and reward even in the contradictions and persecutions they encounter in their endeavours for the kingdom. One must remain free and poor within oneself.
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When it comes to giving, many profound things can be said about it.
For example, "No one has ever become poor by giving" (Anne Frank); "Happiness doesn't result from what we get but from what we give" (Ben Carson); "We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give" (?) and many more profound reflections.
Even the 1st reading has something to say about giving: Honour the Lord with generosity, do not stint the first fruits you bring. Add a smiling face to all your gifts, and be cheerful as you dedicate your tithes.
That's where we get statements like "be a cheerful giver", whether giving to God or giving to others.
So it seems that even in giving, we are urged to be cheerful and to be generous, and to encourage us further, we are told that we will be rewarded, and the 1st reading would even say that the Lord will reward a cheerful and generous giver seven times over.
So giving can be challenging enough to our human tendency, because we are more likely to be calculative and to look for what we can gain from what we give.
Even in the gospel, Peter asked Jesus what is there for him and the rest who have left everything to follow Jesus.
Yes, the act of cheerful and generous giving can be difficult. Yet, the 1st reading reminds us to give to the Most High as He has given to us, generously as our means can afford. May we come to see what the Lord God has given to us. And may we also come to see that the purpose of our life is to give it away, cheerfully and generously.
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Prayer
Lord our God, we hold you to your promise to those who have left everything for the sake of your kingdom and for the gospel of Jesus Christ your Son. Let them be men and women poor in the things that count on this earth but rich with your love and your grace and with a wealth of friends to whom they can bring our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
Saint Casimir; Feast day March 4
The third child of King Casimir IV of Poland, St. Casimir grew up under the tutelage of John Dlugosz, a learned and devout canon of Cracow. Dlugosz trained Casimir in piety from age nine, so the youth developed a hearty Christian character. He avoided all softness and self-indulgence and at the same time related to everyone cheerfully and compassionately.
If we scrape away the thin coat of sweetness from Casimir’s biography, we meet a young man of real integrity and courage. Here is an excerpt:
It is difficult to imagine or to express his passion for justice, his exercise of moderation, his gift of prudence, his fundamental spiritual courage and stability, especially in a most permissive age, when men tended to be headstrong and by their very natures inclined to sin. Daily he urged his father to practice justice throughout his kingdom and in the governance of his people; and whenever anything in the country had been overlooked because of human weakness or simple neglect, he never failed to point it out quietly to the king. He actively took up the cause of the needy and unfortunate and embraced it as his own; for this reason the people called him the patron of the poor. Though the son of a king and descendant of a noble line, he was never unapproachable in his conversation or dealings with anyone, no matter how humble or obscure. He always preferred to be counted among the meek and poor of spirit, among those who are promised the kingdom of heaven, rather than among the famous and powerful men of this world. He had no ambition for the power that lies in human rank and he would never accept it from his father. He was afraid the barbs of wealth, which our Lord Jesus Christ spoke of as thorns, would wound his soul, or that he would be contaminated by contact with worldly goods. Many who acted as his personal servants . . . testify that he preserved his chastity to the very end of his life.
As a young man, Casimir already had the strength to stand up to his father. Once at the request of Hungarian nobles, the king sent Casimir, then barely fifteen years old, at the head of an army against King Matthias Corvinas. When the Hungarian nobles abandoned the cause and Casimir’s men began to desert, he bravely defied his father’s instructions and retreated. And, wisely, he had backed out at a moment when the Turks were threatening to advance against Europe’s eastern borders. Feeling disgraced, however, the king punished his son by confining him at Dobzki castle for three months. But from that time Casimir tenaciously refused to participate in war. Thus his Polish and Lithuanian admirers esteem him as “The Peacemaker.”
Casimir had no inclination to politics, but he always involved himself on behalf of his father’s impoverished subjects. When his father promoted a strategic marriage between him and a daughter of the emperor, he refused because of his commitment to celibacy. Weakened by his asceticism and afflicted with lung disease, Casimir died in 1484. He was only twenty-three years old.
