Reflection:
The famous actor, Katherine Hepburn, once shared an incident from her childhood. Queuing for tickets at the Circus box office with her father, they were behind a family of eight. The parents of that family proudly stepped forward to buy tickets for their six children, only to find that the cost was higher than the money they had on hand. Seeing their potential embarrassment and their children’s pending disappointment, Hepburn’s father discreetly dropped a large-denomination dollar bill on the ground behind him. He then picked it up and handed it to the father, saying, “Sir, I think you dropped this.” Both fathers looked at each other; no words were exchanged, but each knew what was transpiring.
The family could never repay her father, but grace had triumphed. What was even more remarkable, as Hepburn shared, was that she did not get to go to the circus herself that day because their entrance money had already been given away.
In today’s gospel, Jesus encourages us to exercise such generosity. In such ways, the reign of God is made manifest.
In fact, the good news is never merely its proclamation. The words of Jesus proclaim the Reign of God, but it is our embrace of them and our response to this proclamation that brings the good news to life. The reign of God begins in our hearts and manifests itself in our actions. We are truly aligned with God’s vision and presence in our world when we reach out to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind into our world and share what is most precious to us with them. They may not ever repay us, but such things will fade into insignificance in the Resurrection – that moment when God will invite us into an eternal life – and offer us a gift that we can never repay either.
