2 Kgs. 4:8-11, 14-16a; Ps 89:2-3, 16-19; Rom. 6:3-4, 8-11; Mt. 10:37-42
Worthy is the one who had died with Christ. In baptism we have entered in death to sin and risen into life with Christ. Life with Christ is a surrender into living the life of Christ, imitators of his passion, worthy of the cross, and recipients of the eternal gifts. We died with Christ to be a royal priesthood, a holy nation. If we have died with Christ in baptism then death has no power over us. We surrender our mortal bodies in order to receive the eternal rewards of heaven each according to the fruit of our love for Christ. This reward is according to how we received him in this life, how we served him in righteousness, how we cared for the “little ones” most in need.
Elisha, a holy man of God personifies the image of God whose generosity is beyond our imagination. The woman in the first reading is not mentioned by name yet she is recognized for her generosity to Elisha. She, a childness woman could not have imagined Elisha would have intervened with God to grant her “a baby son”. This is not the only time God comes to grant a childless woman a baby in scripture and yet we know that all Old Testament scripture points to the child Jesus who is to come into the world, the greatest of gifts. When we give in generosity God’s blessings are multiplied in our life.
Spinoza the philosopher says, “If love is the goal, then generosity is the road to it”. We all search for love, need to feel loved, and desire to love. Love is the spiritual bond that unites us to God, to each other, and to creation. Recall the lyrics from the movie Urban Cowboy “searching for love in all the wrong places”. The problem is the approach, the more you search the harder to find however the more you give the more it is revealed to you. Generosity begins with a generous God who teaches us how to love and discover love. If we seek love without God we will be greatly mislead. In generosity we discover our true friends who love us at all times and prove themselves in adversity to be faithful. God is faithful and generous and his love is everlasting. Seek God first and true love will be revealed through God as he makes all things possible.
This is why Jesus says “Whoever loves father or mother…son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”. This seems a hard teaching unless we recognize that we only have a father, mother, son or daughter because of God. Our purpose for living cannot be a parent or a child realizing that one day one will die and the other move away and it is not always the parent who dies and then what? Our purpose for being is God who in his generosity has given us earthly parents and children but even they belong to God first. They help us fulfill our purpose before God for our good and the good of others. God first and all things will work for his greater glory.
Our parents, our children are a gift from God that will return to him some day as we will. Then we will realize how much we died with Christ in this life or failed to receive him in all his “little ones”. Worthy is the lamb of God who is calling us to give our lives and follow him. Jesus came into the world and carried his cross faithful to the Father. He came to show us the way of the cross. It is foolish to believe that we can escape the cross that is to come in this life. The offering of the cross comes daily in all the ways we can endure the challenges we face. We then must choose how we will respond to the cross. Will God recognize us by our love response or deny us for having denied the cross. We deny the cross each time we respond with “not me” let another or “why me” take it away. A warrior for Christ embraces the cross with “let me” thanks be to God. This is the way he sent his disciples as sheep to face the serpent. This is the path to holiness and heaven. Are we ready for heaven yet? It begins with taking up our cross having died with Christ and in generosity to his love responding with “let me, Lord”.
The Lord recognizes in his people their imitation of Christ and gives a just reward. For Christ his justice is unbound and his reward is eternal. The Lord hears the cry of his people and is attentive to our needs. Let us forever sing the goodness of the Lord. How? Begin and end the day counting your blessings. We are so quick to overlook all the goodness of the Lord when things are going well and so quick to lose heart when things go wrong. We love the Lord? Let it then be on our lips as we recognize all the goodness of this day. We sometimes sarcastically say, “It is a good day when I wake up and know I’m still alive”. No joke! Let us be grateful we have one more day to get right with the Lord. Make it count!
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