Thursday, July 9,2020

Thursday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

(Hosea 11:1-4.8e-9; Matthew 10:7-15)

I have six pence, jolly, jolly six pence/ I have six pence to last me all my life.

I have two pence to spend and two pence to lend,

And two pence to send home to my wife, poor wife.

Many of us sang such rhymes in our youth perhaps making the best of the days when our earning power was minimal.  Perhaps the apostles sang something like it as they were sent by Jesus to proclaim the Good News.

Jesus tells them that they are not to “take gold or silver or copper” with them.  The last, a copper coin, is what we call today a penny.  Jesus wants the apostles are to preach the goodness of God by their poverty as well as by their words.  Completely dependent on Divine Providence, without even a penny to their name, they will show how the Lord cares for those who trust in Him.  He not only gives them upkeep but a more valuable inner joy.

Often enough today we forget this instruction from Jesus.  Preachers will set substantial fees for their services.  Lay people also may always look for compensation for any service rendered.  It is not that asking a definite amount for one’s efforts is wrong.  The problem is that we do not see ourselves as God’s children with responsibility for one another.  

Homilette for Friday, June 20, 2008

Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

(Matthew 6:19-23)

Some say that if you give a child a choice between a worn dime and shiny penny, she will choose the penny. Perhaps this is true, but my experience of children indicates a different result. Since they have difficulty making choices, children generally want both offerings. A sign of maturity is the ability to choose a goal and to marshal one’s resources to achieve it.

In the gospel today Jesus is calling his disciples to maturity and beyond. He wants them not only to choose between an earthly and a heavenly treasure but to do the good necessary to achieve the latter. Wealth is a fleeting blessing, he would say, where divine love lasts forever. So we are to multiply the love that the Holy Spirit pours into our hearts.