Sense of Suffciency - Sign of Sanctity

WORD 2day : Saturday, 11th week in Ordinary time

June 21, 2025: 2 Corinthians 12: 1-10; Matthew 6: 24-34

The rich and the poor, the affluent and the needy, the influential and the ordinary... they seem to be no different from each other! They wish for more and more and more. And at no point in their life they seem to have a sense of sufficiency. People with thousand pairs of footwears, a couple or more of private jets, scores of floors in more than a few apartments, are known facts today; and at a more ordinary level, people with a few cellphones and scores of sim cards, cupboard full of dresses and loads of wasted food... these are no rare sights too! There is no saying "enough," for the human mind today, or has it been so for all times?

St. Paul today explains the importance of the attitude of saying enough, the sense of sufficiency and considers it a sign of sanctity. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul considers himself 'blessed' with a sense of sufficiency, in plenty and in want (Phil 4: 11,12). In our families, in our personal lives, in our social life, in our religious communities... where does this virtue stand?

Be it Indian traditional spirituality, Western monastic spirituality, Eastern yogic spirituality... everywhere there is a strong point made for detachment, possessing less and learning to live with the minimum! Where do all these spiritualities go, in spite of the highly religious people who live! And the so called people of the religion, are precisely the ones who goad wealth, create a culture of promiscuity and indulge in frivolities unheard of - not many exceptions there, unfortunately!

And above all, the sense of sufficiency comes from and is a fruit of gratitude, a sense of having received enough and in abundance from God. Gratitude is a sign of a sense of sufficiency that one feels with God; and this sense of sufficiency, is obviously therefore, a sure sign of sanctity.

The heart, the eye and the lesson!

WORD 2day: Friday, 11th week ìn Ordinary time

June 20, 2025: 2 Corinthians 11:18,21-30; Mathew 6: 19-23

Jesus speaks of the heart and the eye and the importance of these to a being. St. Paul presents himself as a madman who is putting himself through so many trials. He knows more will be coming but remains ready to risk them all. We have hosts and hosts of martyrs who have died for what they believed in, Saints who lived for God and God's purposes till the last breath of their lives, and people who continue to risk their lives for causes they commit themselves to.

Where lies their strength? In their heart and in their eye, says the Gospel today. Heart refers to their Priority and eyes to their Perspective!

When God becomes my priority, nothing else would matter to me more than being Godly. Not my career, not my comforts, not my social status, not the conventional success, not the power and the position that everyone clamours for...nothing can deter me from living my life for God and God's purposes. That is my heart...and where my heart is there my treasures will be too!

When God becomes my perspective my whole world changes, because I begin to see everything the way God sees them. The jealousy of God that St. Paul spoke of yesterday is nothing but the way God looks at us: as God's own! Hence it is only right and just that we consider ourselves God's own too and in every way make ourselves so - that is becoming like God, in the way we see, think, judge and make choices. That is our eyes...and the way we look at others and at the world, will decide to whom we truly belong.

What is expected of us is, that we form our hearts and our eyes, that we ascertain our priority and clarify our perspective. May the Spirit of the Lord help us to become aware of our heart, our eye and the lesson that the Word gives us today.