WHY BE ENVIOUS BECAUSE I AM GENEROUS?

PRAYER MOMENT                      

Wednesday 20 August 2014, St Bernard (1090-1153)

WHY BE ENVIOUS BECAUSE I AM GENEROUS?

Pause. Be still in God’s presence.

Reading: “Have  I no right to do what I like with my own? Why be envious because I am generous?” (Matt 20:1-16)

Reflection. This is the parable of those who came at the “eleventh hour.” They received the same wages as those who had done “a heavy day’s work in all the heat.” It is a story of God’s freedom. He springs surprises. “It is precisely the parts that seem the weakest that are the indispensable ones” (2 Cor 12:22). It was a little captured Jewish slave girl who started the train of events that led to the cure of Naaman, the Syrian with leprosy (2 Kgs 5:14). God exercises a beautiful freedom in calling the weak, the handicapped, the poor, the late, the foreigners and “them” to witness to the powerful, the chosen, the qualified, those with status and “us”. It is a parable that foretells the fruitful mission to the Gentiles and it is also a parable that calls us to notice the signs of the God’s coming today in the most seemingly unlikely places.  .      

      

Prayer. Lord Jesus, teach us to be alert to your presence in the people and events of our day. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear.  Amen

David Harold-Barry SJ