Daily Reflections - January 22,2013

THE OUTCOME, NOT THE INCOME

 

Last year, my high school batch celebrated our 25th anniversary after graduating from Rizal High School in Pasig. It was a joy seeing familiar places and faces. It was heartwarming to meet again teachers who have obviously grown old but whose shared wisdom is still fresh in my heart and mind.

I celebrated Mass during the alumni homecoming sponsored by our batch. One former teacher approached me after the Mass and told me how surprised she was that I became a priest. I get that comment all the time, so I don’t blame her.

But what she said stuck with me. After I asked her how she was doing, she jokingly, then seriously, said, “I still have a meager salary. But when I see the products of my efforts as a teacher, it feels like I’m enjoying my retirement benefit already.”

Truly, the teaching profession is one of the most underpaid and unappreciated profession. But even then, there lies its nobility. With the teaching profession, the outcome, not the income, is the goal.

This need not be in the teaching profession alone. I believe it should be a life principle because that is what God expects from His children. Listen to the words of today’s First Reading: “For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints” (v.10). Yes, God forgets not the work and the love we put in our ministering, wherever and whatever it is that we do.

When we are income-oriented, we stop loving when the cash stops flowing. When we are outcome-oriented, we press on even when our blood starts flowing. Fr. Joel Jason

 

REFLECTION QUESTION: Do you look at life merely from the vantage point of income and benefit?

 

Draw me, O Lord, where I can experience the joy of Your favor when I minister with love and devotion. Amen.