That gospel episode where Christ praised a poor widow for giving all that she had to live on to the treasury of the temple (cfr. Lk 21,1-4) graphically reminds us that Christian poverty, which is what is required for true Christian love to reign in our hearts, is not so much a matter of how much, in terms of money and quantity, we are willing to be detached from as detaching ourselves from our very own selves, giving everything to God.
It’s actually the best deal that we can have, since as Christ said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to have his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” (Mt 16,24-25)
This is divine wisdom which we have to learn to live by. Moreover, it is something which we have to learn how to convince others, especially the young ones who are exposed today to so much materialism and egotistic ways, to believe in it.
This is something that we, in our own time with our distinctive cultures and mindsets, should also learn to do. We can only show and give Christ to others, we can only make Christ’s redemptive messages and lessons appreciated by us, if we learn how to connect the real Christ, both in spirit and in the flesh, and not a disembodied Christ, to the people of today.
But given our human condition which allows us to learn things in stages, we have to understand that everyday we have to conquer our tendency to fall into some earthly attachments so that we can say we are giving ourselves more and more to God until we give ourselves completely to him.
We have to learn to let go of our possessions, our preferences, our opinions, etc., until we can say that we are letting go of our whole selves so as to give everything to God, and with God we are assured that we can have everything that is truly important to us! (Fr. Roy Cimagala)
