How ready are we to give?

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 2nd week in Ordinary time

January 18, 2023: Hebrews 7: 1-3,15-17; Mark 3: 1-6

The readings today speak of two religious disciplines that mattered much to the Old Testament people of God: the practice of tithing and the observance of the Sabbath. Both of them taken in their legalistic sense, would be practices very simple but of less significance. A tenth of your possession given grudgingly, or as in the example of Ananias and Saphira (Acts 5) trying to make it as affecting as possible, will bear no spiritual fruit. 

Keeping Sabbath as a day of dead and insensitive inactivity instead of holy and active worship to God, will be of no spiritual value. The key to right understanding here is, not giving of what we have, but giving of what we are: a true self giving. Making everything - things, time, oneself - a giving; a giving from the core of our beings. In a world that is torn between compromises and mixed allegiances, the call today shines forth as a splendid beacon, beckoning us towards concrete and daily sanctity.

We are created children of God; we are chosen as people of God; we are sent in the name of the Lord; how ready are we to give of ourselves, fully and whole heartedly? Will our giving anyday equal the boundless love that God has given us, and continues to give us?