22^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dear Parishioners,

The central message of the readings of today are humility, poverty, and the embracing of our own lowliness.  This message reminds us of the beatitudes in the gospel of Matthew and in particular the first “blessed are the poor in spirit, the kingdom of Heaven is theirs” which is the key to enter all the other beatitudes.  Today’s reading makes the same invitation; it is through humility and poverty that we gain access to God and His Kingdom.  Why is that the case?  Because only when we are humble and realise that we are poor do we recognise our need for God and our reliance on Him.  In our humility and poverty, we place our trust in God; we rely on God and not on our own strengths.  And we are able to trust in Him because we recognise that he is a generous God. 

Experiencing the generosity of God ourselves teaches us to imitate his generosity in our own lives.  We hear this in Luke “So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; hence, she has shown great love, But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”  The experience of generous forgiveness from God moves us to love generously ourselves. The experience of the generosity of God in our own poverty moves us to be generous with others in their poverty.

Psalm 67 which we read today boasts of this generosity and goodness of God that we are called to rely on.  It talks of a God who is especially sensitive to the plight of the orphan and the widow, who in a unique way profoundly experiences poverty.  It is a call for us too to learn this sensitivity from God and be more compassionate and generous to those who in a profound way experience poverty the orphans, the widows, the lonely…etc. 

In our world today, the consequence of the pandemic and the reality of war have resulted in the scarcity of many things and the increase in prices making the notion of material poverty a reality for many more people.  As we learn to humble ourselves and embrace our poverty relying on His generosity, perhaps it is an invitation for us be generous with what we have.  The solution to material poverty is generosity, it not that there is not enough to go around but rather that what there is, is just not distributed fairly.  Thus, the more we can all grow in generosity makes the possibility that poverty may become  thing of the past more of a reality.  I invite you today in a moment of quite reflection to ask God, How are you inviting me to be humble and embrace my poverty? How are you asking me to rely on and learn from your generosity? So that I can also be generous to those around me.

Have a blessed Sunday and week ahead

Ann Marie.