October 20, 2015
Tuesday
29th Week
in Ordinary Time
1st reading: Romans 5.12, 15b, 17-21
Gospel: Luke 12:35-38
Jesus said to his disciples, “Be ready, dressed for service, and keep your lamps lit, like people waiting for their master to return from the wedding. As soon as he comes and knocks, they will open to him. Happy are those servants whom the master finds wide-awake when he comes. Truly, I tell you, he will put on an apron and have them sit at table and he will wait on them. Happy are those servants if he finds them awake when he comes at midnight or daybreak!”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
The moment of judgement will focus on how we have complied with the Love Commandment. It will be difficult for us to fool the Judge because our failure to exercise charity can be verified by the level of poverty our neighbors suffer. If e-veryone is faithful in exercising charity, the number of poor people can go down.
Jesus had predicted that the poor will always be with us (Mark 14:7). He did not say why. Many solutions have been proposed to address poverty. A popular one is Todaro and Smith’s theory that a “sustained elevation of an entire society and social system” leads to “better” or “more humane life”. As to how exactly this is done, Todaro and Smith (Economic development, 2003) hinted at the satisfaction of the triple human needs namely, sustenance, self-esteem and freedom from slavery.
Better and more humane life is achieved when man’s sense of self- worth is promoted. The concept of what gives citizens a sense of self-worth may vary from culture to culture. But all agree that self-esteem is upheld when people are not used as tools like cogs in a wheel.
Government systems determined to use its citizenry like cogs in a wheel encourage citizens to believe that some are born to be poor and destined to die poor. We must emphasize that the “happy are the poor” referred to by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount is not material poverty but poverty in spirit.
Todaro and Smith’s theory boils down to the practice of charity. Charity is larger than dole-out, for it encompasses all acts befitting the dignity of the beneficiary as a human being made in the image and likeness of God. Because of this no society has the right to use its citizens as cogs in a wheel.
When we practice charity we serve to the best of our ability without feeling like a slave to the beneficiary because we know that in serving him we serve God. In the end it is charity that weeds out poverty. On Judgment Day we have reasons to feel nervous if we haven’t left society better than how we found it when we were born. —Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: [email protected]. Website: www.frdan.org.
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