Trickle Down Blessings
November 21, 2012
Memorial of
the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
By Colleen
O'Sullivan
“Worthy are you, Lord our God, to receive glory and
honor and power, for you created all things; because of your will they came to
be and were created.” (Rev. 4:11)
While people were listening to Jesus speak, he
proceeded to tell a parable because he was near Jerusalem and they thought the
Kingdom of God would appear there immediately.
So he said, “A nobleman went off
to a distant country to obtain the kingship for himself and then to return. He
called ten of his servants and gave them ten gold coins and told them, ‘Engage
in trade with these until I return.’ His
fellow citizens, however, despised him and sent a delegation after him to
announce, ‘We do not want this man to be our king.’ But when he returned after obtaining the
kingship, he had the servants called, to whom he had given the money, to learn
what they had gained by trading…” (Luke 19:11-15)
Piety
O Lord, ever guide me that my life in this world may in some way glorify
and honor you.
Study
Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem.
Sometimes his journey reads a bit
like The Canterbury Tales, so varied
are the characters he meets along the way.
In this section of Luke’s Gospel
(18:18 – 19:28), the Lord encounters a well-intentioned rich man, whose love
for his possessions unfortunately outweighs his desire to follow Jesus. Then
he meets a blind beggar who cries out for healing. Upon
having his sight restored, this man, full of gratitude, joins the followers,
glorifying God every step of the way. Just prior to today’s reading, Jesus spots
Zacchaeus in a tree and shouts to him to come down, that he is coming to dinner
at his house. Zacchaeus, knowing himself to be despised, a
tax collector, an extortionist and sinner, is overwhelmed that Jesus is
honoring someone like him with his presence and responds that he will make
restitution for all the money he’s stolen from taxpayers and will give half of
his wealth to the poor.
Jesus seems to take all these characters and incorporate them into the
parable he tells in today’s Gospel passage.
First, he talks of a nobleman
taking a long journey to obtain a kingship.
He knows that his disciples and
many others in the crowd expect political fireworks when they reach the holy
city. They believe his kingship will be political. They
don’t understand that he will be a suffering Messiah and that it may be a long
time between his death and resurrection and the day he returns as King in glory. Through this parable of the Ten Golden Coins,
Jesus says we have a choice about how to live in the meantime. Some
of us will take what God gives us and generously share it with our brothers and
sisters. Some of us will take what God gives us and selfishly
hoard it for ourselves. Others of us will reject Christ entirely,
saying we don’t want him as our King. There are other things in life we deem more worthy
of our worship.
Action
Two thousand years is a long time to wait, and we have no idea how many
days or millennia more may pass before Christ returns. So,
some of us may have relaxed our vigilance.
But as Jesus reminds us in the
parable, the King will eventually return and will demand an accounting of us.
When you are examining your conscience, try doing it in terms of this
parable. Do we share what God has given us? Beyond material goods, God has blessed us
with his love, his mercy, forgiveness and healing. Do we
let those things flow through us to others?
Are we loving, kind, merciful and forgiving in our relationships with our
brothers and sisters?
Or are we sometimes hoarders of all God has bestowed upon us? Yes, we see in our lives how much God loves
us. Yes, God has healed us at times, forgiven our
sins, shown us mercy, maybe blessed us with material wealth, but we want to
hold it close. We don’t want to let go of it. It
doesn’t trickle down to others we encounter.
As we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Lord, what kind of
people are we?
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