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June 22, 2020
Sister Maria Catherine Toon
Elisha’s travels allow him to take advantage of a married couple’s hospitality in this passage. God rewards those who generously provide for God’s kingdom. After being on the receiving end of others’ generosity, the Lord has shown me both how humbling it is to receive gifts from benefactors, but also that he blesses souls richly who respond with foresight and provide for the church. The wife’s conversion and salvation could very well depend on these small acts of generosity that she gives to the prophet. Although Elisha’s poverty and detachment prevent him from giving material gifts, his response to the wife’s generosity is lavish: She will receive a child, her heart’s desire. Likewise, God’s generosity to us in his grace is lavish. Through the church, we receive the sacraments that save us, hear the word of God preached, and have a spiritual family with which to exercise hospitality to the world.
Like Elisha, Paul indicates that the Christians who are doing God’s will have died to themselves in imitation of Christ. This means carrying our own cross daily, while trusting that God is extravagant with his grace. While it’s easy to get caught up in the sacrifices that carrying one’s cross demands, the goal is deeper interior freedom to love others and to be loved by God. Carrying the cross means laboring with Christ in us to part with jealousy, insecurity, fearfulness, pride, ambition and any other dysfunctions in ourselves, or our families. Our daily cross means turning to Jesus and Our Lady when we feel jealous of someone else, asking them to give us the grace to value the other person while also recognizing our own gifts; if feeling insecure or fearful, ask Jesus and Our Lady to help you to see the root cause. In these ways, Jesus enters in and opens the floodgates with his healing grace. We become more free, the more Christ reigns in us.
The Apostle Paul encourages us not to cling to our possessions or ideas, but instead seek constant, daily conversion to “put on the new man” as he says in several places throughout his letters. This is not to disparage those who have many possessions, or enjoy material blessings, but rather an opportunity to examine one’s attachment to Christ. Does he come first? In everything? Above everything else?
Ask the Holy Spirit to show you where you are attached in your life. Is it your children? Your reputation? Your idea of what society should be like? Ask him to open your heart and mind to his way, because Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life.”
Ironically, Christ is the king of an “upside down” kingdom. In order to find real life in the kingdom, we must allow ourselves to grow smaller and lose what we think life is about. St. Catherine of Siena advises someone in her letters to “leave it all to him, let go of yourself, lose yourself on the cross, and you will find yourself entirely.” This is losing your life for his sake so that you (and others) can find it.
Sister Maria Catherine Toon is a professed Dominican Sister of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.