The “All” of Abandonment
by Fr. David M. Knight
Sunday, November 10, 2024
Thirty-Second Sunday of the Year
1 Kgs 17:10-16/Heb 9:24-28/Mk 12:38-44 or 12:41-44 (Lectionary 155)
How do you feel about giving? Do repeated demands for donations annoy you? What about the constant demands on your time? How do you cope with this?
1Kings 17:10-16: Elijah asked a starving woman to feed him first before using the last of her flour on herself and her child. But he knew he was asking no sacrifice:
For the LORD, the God of Israel, says: The jar of flour shall not go empty, nor the jug of oil run dry, until the day when the LORD sends rain upon the earth.”
He knew it, and she knew it, but only by faith. The point is, she believed his words, did what he said, and the promise became true for her.
To “abandon all” for God is not really any sacrifice at all—if we believe.
“All that she had...”
Mark 12:38-44 gives us another example of the same total act of faith. Jesus praised a “poor widow” who put into the temple collection box “two small copper coins worth about a cent.” He said she “contributed more than all the others”—not quantitatively, but qualitatively. Her gift was worth more because of the faith it expressed. “She gave from her want, all that she had to live on.” It takes faith to do that!
Both she and the other “poor widow” Elijah dealt with are examples of the same thing: total abandonment to God. They put into God’s hands everything they had to live on, their only hope of survival. And Elijah’s donor also put the life of her son into God’s hands. She gave away all she had left to provide for him.
We might say the first widow was not risking anything: she was expecting to die anyway. But aren’t we all? When we refuse God something to “preserve our lives” on this earth, how much life are we preserving? First, we have no assurance of living even one more day; and even if we live to a hundred, how does that compare with the “eternal life” that we already possess?
Some Christians “tithe”—Protestants more than Catholics. That is good, so long as we know we give our tithe to the Church, not to God. To give God just ten percent—or ninety-nine percent—would be blasphemy. We give God all.
Once and for all
Hebrews 9:24-28 is making the point that we don’t need to be forgiven over and over. Jesus took away all our sins—past, present and future—once and for all on the cross. In our time-frame we need to repent as we commit them, but their reality has already been erased. Just as Mass does not “repeat” Calvary but makes it present to us here and now. And invites us to accept again to “lose our lives” with him in his death to find them with him in his resurrection. All for All.
Insight: Do you see why, no matter how much we give to God, we lose nothing?
Initiative: If you choose to “abandon” all you have and are to God, what would this mean?
Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry
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