In plenty and in want...

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

September 25, 2024 - Proverbs 30:5-9; Luke 9: 1-6

Have you heard of anyone who decides to resign his (or her) job for the single reason that they are paying him unreasonably high? Yes, there are cases. Of course these are few and far between, and are drowned by the delirious majority which clamours for more without limits. However, the first reading speaks of a mindset of the former 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 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! 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. 

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. This is the same as St. Paul suggests: 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).