In plenty and in want...

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 25th week in Ordinary time

September 23, 2020: Proverbs 30:5-9; Luke 9: 1-6

What would be your reaction if you hear a young person, in a prosperous turn of his career telling you, "I am resigning my so-called promising and colourful job." And you ask him the reason and he says: " they are paying me unreasonably high!" Strange! Would it be not? It was possible half a decade ago, in a booming kind of a situation. Though today, this may not be possible at all, with all the crisis and economic strain around, the first reading speaks of a mindset of this sort- a man who wants to live neither in want nor in plenty. Not in want, because he will not think of shortcuts to get rich; nor in plenty, that he does not forget the one who gives. 

Jesus knew that mindset! He instructs his apostles on being a messenger of God... the crux of his instruction is not merely about whether to have or not to have, whether to possess or not to possess, but it is all about depending on God or not, and how dependent do you feel on God and how dependent on other forces of push and pull around you! 

Poverty within the worldview of the Reign of God, in terms of Jesus' thinking, is a fundamental dependence on God. Being grateful for what God gives, and being expectant like a child to be given things in love. With that mindset, everything is appreciated as a blessing and not to have is not a cause for lament.You know you will be given at the right time, and you know the One who gives is all the time watchful over you. 

It is more than what proverbs suggests, while the passage from the proverbs carries a tinge of cynical realism, the Gospel offers a proactive sense of dependence out of true human freedom, that defines a true disciple and a dedicated apostle. Clearly St. Paul makes a choice for the Gospel mentality, the mind of Christ: to learn to live in want and in plenty, because we can do anything through the one who strengthens us (cf. Phil 4:12,13).