I heard a priest’s story about their small community that contemplated to give free sandwiches to the poor street people in their area. They went ahead with their plan, buying loaf breads and sandwich spreads with their available fund. They organized and coordinated their outreach with the local authorities. They free-up their personal schedules to make sure that all hands are on the deck for a smooth and effective feeding program. On the day of outreach itself and while the poor people where all lining up, the first two persons on the line asked one community leader, "Ano po ang palaman ng sandwich?".Upon knowing the type of sandwich spreads used, they moved away from the line, remarking,"Ayy, ayoko ng palaman, di bale na lang."
Lowly 10%.
Lowly 10%.
After curing ten lepers only one Samaritan man came back to give thanks to Jesus. It inevitably saddened Him that those who recovered from the physical and social stigma of leprosy of those times failed to give thanks. Not that He needed acknowledgment or praise from them, but that it meant to reflect the deep and personal faith-change of those who were cured.
Nevertheless, Jesus, instead of castigating the ungrateful nine, took that opportunity to preach about the virtue of gratitude.
And then what?
Jesus continued His preaching and His healing. He knows His mission is not to be dictated by the good or bad reactions, by the praise or persecution, by the faith or lack thereof of whom He blesses. His obedience to His Father’s mandate took precedence over these distractions..
We live in a time where disaster and calamities abound in which a lot of people need our assistance. We answer their call but at times lost that desire once negative situations surfaced – government mishandling of calamity funds, selective distributions, politicking, abuses or malpractices resulting to spoilage or misuse of relief goods, proliferation of bogus foundations, and upfront ungratefulness of some recipients are to name a few. We use these unfortunate events to make sweeping justification that nothing good can come out from our small good deeds.
But the truth is, we must not be disheartened when these things happen and when people do not appreciate or even acknowledge our kind assistance. God who sees our deepest heart’s desire to extend help is truly happy with our good deeds, with our generosity. He knows how we are trying our best to fulfill His commandment to do these things to the least of our brethren.
So the challenge remains – do we keep giving despite the hurts or do we distance ourselves eventually? Hopefully, we keep choosing the former.
By all means we should choose our medium of generosity in order for evil not to take advantage of our kindness.
But we must all be spontaneous givers, not calculating.
We must be naturally generous.
We must keep on giving.
God bless po.
