Okay, so this homily is from last week, prepared for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time (September 30th). Hope you enjoy, or at least hope you don't hate it. And if you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, let me know. Thank you very much.
A
question that often comes up is “What do I do when someone comes up to me and
asks for money?” When we ask this
question, we don’t normally mean, “What do I do if one of my friends or family
members asks me for money” because we know exactly what to do in that
situation. We know the person, we trust
them, and we’re pretty sure we can trust the person to do the right thing with
that money. What the question really
means is “What do I do when someone I don’t know comes up to me and asks me for
money?” Usually, in our experiences,
this happens in train stations, airports, in front of convenience stores, or
even on the street. The person may look
grungy, untrustworthy, and someone we think that we really don’t want to
know. We are immediately suspicious and
jealous of the person. “What do they
need money for? Drugs, Alcohol, or something I don’t even want to know?”
This
seems to be the way Joshua felt when Moses was told about the two men
prophesying in the camp, when he said “Moses, my lord, stop them.” Joshua’s reaction is similar to John’s report
to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we
tried to prevent him because he does not follow us." Now, granted, neither Joshua nor John were
worried about drugs or alcohol and the people weren’t requesting money. They
were jealous and possessive about God’s gifts though. Eldad and Medad weren’t in the gathering when
God poured His Spirit upon those at the tent and the man the apostles tried to
prevent from driving out demons was not traveling with Jesus and the
apostles. They are suspicious and
jealous though because those people aren’t “one of us.”
There’s
one particular time, though it’s happened more than once, that sticks out in my
mind. I was at Union Station in Chicago
and I had grabbed a quick bite to eat in between getting off one train and
getting on the other. I sat down and was
eating when a homeless woman approached me and asked for money. I said “I’m sorry, I can’t help” which she
accepted and walked away. I did have
money, but I didn’t know what she was going to do with it. I was also exhausted and in somewhat of a
hurry. She had sat down not too far from
where I was and was minding her own business.
Her question and my response started to gnaw at me and continued for a
few minutes. In a way, I couldn’t
believe it, I thought I may be saving her from feeding an addiction, what am I
feeling guilty for? After those few
minutes, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I
finished my food, approached her and said, “Ma’am, I’m sorry, here you go” and
handed her 4 dollars, the change I had.
She said thank you and God bless you and I walked away to catch my
train. I had been jealous and possessive
of the money I had on my person at the time.
I had earned it, it was my money.
It wasn’t much, but it was still mine.
I had come to realize something, though, when I made the decision to
give her the money. That money wasn’t
mine, I had custody of it, but it wasn’t actually mine, so why was I being so
possessive of it?
Moses
asks a very similar of Joshua "Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the people of the LORD were
prophets! Would that the LORD might
bestow his spirit on them all!"
Moses understands that the gift of prophecy is God’s to give and, it
seems, desires that all people would be open to God’s spirit. Moses knows that God is generous and seeks to
be that generous himself. Jesus himself
replies to the apostles Jesus replied, "Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in
my name who can at the same time speak ill of me.” The underlying statement and question seems
to be, “God knows who He gives His gifts to, why are you trying to prevent His
generosity?”
When we see
God’s generosity, we are called to be generous ourselves, in imitation of
Christ. While there are times we may be
on less of a tight schedule, or have gift cards, there are also going to be the
times we may be horribly rushed and have no gift cards, but we do have money
and are approached for help. What are
you going to do in that situation? Let
us ask God that He will give us the graces to be generous in all that we do.
