“Blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.” Luke 14:14
“What’s in it for me?” How many times have we approached a situation or a request with this attitude? I am willing to do something, but immediately wondering, what can I get out of this situation; willing to do a favor but seeking personal benefits. This is the attitude that Jesus is trying to bring to our attention in today’s Gospel. In whatever we do, we do it first and foremost for the glory of God. We shouldn’t go around seeking to do good or seeking to assist the weak in our society, such as the stranger, the foreigner, the widow, the orphan, or the poor, and then expect an earthly reward. Instead, we act out of love and concern for them. “What’s in it for me?” Our response should be “the joy of knowing that the poor and marginalized haven’t gone unnoticed, unloved, or uncared under my watch; the joy that my actions have brought some good into the world and into the lives of others; the joy that God’s work is being done through me.”
This week, the Church remembers a good example of this selfless approach in Saint Gregory the Great. His title isn’t in the triumph of personal glory but the glory which his work brought to the name of God. He was a great reformer in the Church who encourage the clergy to place the needs of the weak first. He removed unworthy priests from office, forbade priests from taking money for many services, used all the money in the papal treasury to ransom the prisoners who were held captives by the Lombards, and cared for persecuted Jews and the victims of plague and famine. He also protected Christians from heretics who were attempting to lead them astray and even enhanced the service around worship. He may have been content as a monk, but his willingness to serve Jesus Christ and his Church put forth his preference to sacrifice for the good of charity – that is love, for the love of God, giving all his energy to doing God’s work. May Saint Gregory the Great then be to us a model of how we could place God and the charity which He desires for us above all else in our lives.
In Christ
Fr Robert