Growing up I never understood why my mum was so generous with strangers. We were a middle income family and so had just enough. But it didn’t matter if they were foreign workers, waiters and waitresses, bus drivers, bell hops etc. She would often buy them food, snacks, drinks, or treats. Sometimes a few dollars here and there or after befriending them she may even offer them our old clothing. She was like that, not because she saw herself a Saint for she was quick and hot tempered, but I believe she never forgot her beginnings in which poverty was a way of life. She knew how little things can make big differences in others lives. And another valuable lesson, she learnt was that joy and peace is to be had not so much in the receiving but in the giving.
Lord Jesus I thank you for people in my life like my mother. Give me a generous heart like them and wisdom to manage the resources You give me; so that I may use them for Your glory. Amen
First reading
Philippians 4:10-19
It is a great joy to me, in the Lord, that at last you have shown some concern for me again; though of course you were concerned before, and only lacked an opportunity. I am not talking about shortage of money: I have learnt to manage on whatever I have, I know how to be poor and I know how to be rich too. I have been through my initiation and now I am ready for anything anywhere: full stomach or empty stomach, poverty or plenty. There is nothing I cannot master with the help of the One who gives me strength. All the same, it was good of you to share with me in my hardships. In the early days of the Good News, as you people of Philippi well know, when I left Macedonia, no other church helped me with gifts of money. You were the only ones; and twice since my stay in Thessalonika you have sent me what I needed. It is not your gift that I value; what is valuable to me is the interest that is mounting up in your account. Now for the time being I have everything that I need and more: I am fully provided now that I have received from Epaphroditus the offering that you sent, a sweet fragrance – the sacrifice that God accepts and finds pleasing. In return my God will fulfil all your needs, in Christ Jesus, as lavishly as only God can.
Gospel
Luke 16:9-15
Jesus said to his disciples, ‘I tell you this: use money, tainted as it is, to win you friends, and thus make sure that when it fails you, they will welcome you into the tents of eternity. The man who can be trusted in little things can be trusted in great; the man who is dishonest in little things will be dishonest in great. If then you cannot be trusted with money, that tainted thing, who will trust you with genuine riches? And if you cannot be trusted with what is not yours, who will give you what is your very own?
‘No servant can be the slave of two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second, or treat the first with respect and the second with scorn. You cannot be the slave both of God and of money.’
The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and laughed at him. He said to them, ‘You are the very ones who pass yourselves off as virtuous in people’s sight, but God knows your hearts. For what is thought highly of by men is loathsome in the sight of God.’
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