My real worth: where do I get it from?

Tuesday, 32nd week in Ordinary time

November 13, 2018: Titus 2:1-8, 11-14; Luke 17: 7-10

Today there is so much spoken of self mastery, self actualisation and self worth! Where does one's real worth come from? From merely your age or the social status that is offered to you or from the great successes that you parade to the world? From what you possess as wealth and pass on as inheritance? From what others speak of you and what you project to others about yourself? As a person, your true worth comes from within you, instructs the Word today. 

Self worth comes from within, meaning, each of us understands what one is called to, what one's commission is and lives it in his or her daily life, without making a mess out of it. One thing is, not to understand what we are called to, which is already bad enough. But it is altogether another thing that we do not want to know or understand it, just to have our own way. That is a dangerous proposition, very harmful for oneself and for others!

At times we do a little that we do, and go about trumpeting it all around. Worse still some times we do not do anything much but go around building it up as if we have moved mountains. And the worst of all is doing everything that we do, merely to be noticed and praised and given the social recognition that I am an important person in the vicinity. 

Christian life is all about living the essential goodness that we have within us, thanks to the very fact that we are children of God and never expecting to be lauded for what we do, because what we do is what we have to do! Jesus puts it so plainly in today's Gospel: we are merely humble servants; we do just what we ought to (cf. Lk 17:10).