Daily Reflections - January 23,2013

PAYING IT FORWARD

 

A priest in a poor parish was having problems with his budget because of poor collections. One Sunday evening, after counting the meager collection, he prayed to God, “Lord, I will lift up to You all this Sunday collection. I will throw it up in the air. What remains up in the air will be Yours. What goes down will be mine.”

In today’s First Reading, we read of Abraham giving to Melchizedek, the high priest, “a tenth of   everything” to be offered to God. This is one biblical basis of the Christian practice of tithing, i.e., apportioning a tenth of all of one’s income and giving it to the Church for God’s service.

The skeptic and the stingy in us may ask, “What does God need 10 percent of my income for?” The question is right. He does not need 10 percent of our income. In fact, He doesn’t need anything from us. God is God from eternity. Without us, He will still be God. Without anything from us, He will not be lacking. The Christian practice of tithing is encouraged not because God needs it. We are encouraged to tithe because we need it.

Tithing is not simply an act of monetary charity. Tithing, first of all, is a spiritual practice of holy detachment. Holy detachment is spiritual freedom from the goods of this world. Detachment does not deny the value of worldly goods. Detachment only reminds us that they are so good we can treat them as god; and to treat a good as a god is idolatry. Tithing enables us to be spiritually free and conscious that the goods of this world are but foretastes and presentiments of the greater good that awaits God’s children.

Secondly, tithing reminds the heart and keeps it grateful. Tithing reminds us that everything is grace, undeserved, and so we give back to God through the Church so that His purpose may continue and the less privileged may be blessed as well. In the practice of tithing, we pay forward the gift that we have been blessed with. Fr. Joel Jason

 

REFLECTION QUESTION: How have you responded in situations where you have the chance to pay it forward?

 

“Dearest Lord, teach me to be generous; to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds...” Amen.