SOME PEOPLE EMBODY in their lives not only the letter of the law, but also the spirit. Perhaps they do not know theology or rhetoric, but show us with simple gestures what true religion consists in. I was able to observe a woman of this type when I was barely seven years old. She had invited my mother and me to eat at her house. She was a single mother, as her husband had left her; she had three children and was extremely poor. However, in spite of her poverty, she gave us the best she had and more—a real banquet: vegetables cooked with love and sautéed with butter, rice with beans and guineo (an unripe banana used for cooking), and a delicious dessert. How had she come up with all that? We did not know. It was evidently not proportional to her economy; it was far beyond it. nut day, we had a feast of generosity, gratitude toward life, and unselfishness. We could see an aspect of religion put into practice
This experience connects me with the passage in the Bible referring to the Feast of Weeks, also known as the Festival of Harvest, the Day of Firstfruits, or Pentecost. feast celebrated the harvest of the yearly firstfruits from the land that were reaped in the spring. As part of the celebration of that feast, God had commanded that, in a solemn manner, every Israelite had to voluntarily present an offering to the Lord in gratitude for the firstfruits. That offering had to be proportional to the way “the Lord your God blesses you»(Deuteronomy 16:10). That was the letter of the law: putting into practice gratitude to God by voluntarily returning to Him a proportional part of what He had given them as a blessing.
There certainly were people who complied with this order very precisely, but there were also those who went much farther and forgot about proportions to give with all their heart. They were people like the woman in today’s story, who did not use her economic situation as a basis for measuring how much to give and how much to keep, but from the abundance of the love in her heart, gave without thinking about how much she would have left. That was what Christ gave for you: everything, without skimping, up to His very life. Let us learn to give without thinking about proportions
«You shall keep the Feast of Weeks to the Lord your God with the tribute of a freewill offering from your hand, which you shall give as the Lord your God blesses you»(Deuteronomy 16:10)
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Take From: Daily Devotions for Women’s 2020
«One Day at a Time»
From: Patricia Muñoz Bertozzi
Collaborators: Lorina Maya & Obed Ramos
