Our Crowns at His Feet

“He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.”  Colossians 1:18

I went to see a friend recently who has come to a certain age, and is in the process of moving from her grand old house into a retirement community.  She’s made the decision with proper deliberation, and she knows it’s the right choice.  A smaller space means freedom for her, the ability to age with more dignity and grace.  But it’s a challenging and sometimes sorrowful task to sort through all these things that fill her old house, and to make those inevitable decisions about what can be taken and what must be left to others.

She wanted me to see the house in all its glory, before the packers descended, stirring up the dust and setting things ajar.  She led me from room to room, and told me the stories behind the furniture and the pictures on the wall.  This piece was her grandmother’s and that one she spotted at a sale in the rain and bought it for a song.  The friend who painted that picture has been gone for years, but this artist went on to become a smashing success.  The things we gather together over a lifetime do clutter our houses and accumulate ever so much dust.  But they are the tangible signs of our memories.  They express our relationships.

My friend seemed most excited about the things in the house she was preparing to send on to others.   A local museum in her grandfather’s home town had agreed to take a few items that couldn’t really fit in anyone’s drawing room.  Her son had said he would like to have a cherished collection.  She was surprised by that.  He’d never shown so much interest when she’d tried to explain all the parts to him before.  But she smiled when she thought about how he had already decided where it would fit in his own home.  She would make him notes about where each piece had come from, why it was significant.  He would never be able to remember all of it, she guessed.  But it reminded him of her, of course.  He knew how much she loved the collection, and that matters.

Our Delight and Our Duty

You may have noticed that the Saint Francis pledge cards sent to you a few weeks ago are headed by II Corinthians 9:7, “Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”  It’s perhaps the most famous passage in the New Testament about giving to God, and it’s a very fitting way to encapsulate one set of reasons why we commit part of what God has given us back to His Church, to use in doing His work. 

Saint Paul is identifying giving as a free and loving response to God’s generosity to us.  Giving brings us joy because it allows us a stake in the way the good news about Jesus is advancing and changing people’s lives.  Giving is a delight, a way to express what is most meaningful in our lives.  To fully account for these factors, giving should be without compulsion.  We discern carefully the kind of commitment we have been called to make.  We place our hearts in the brass collection plate.

The passage is a wonderful summary of one set of reasons why we give. 

The Holy Madness of Giving

Zita of Lucca was a thirteenth-century house servant. Patient and responsible, she was given to meditation and heard Mass daily. But she was known and loved most of all for her generosity. Whatever Zita had, she gave away to the poor.

One cold morning, compelled by her master to wear his cloak on her journey to church, she met a beggar and wrapped the cloak around him without a moment’s hesitation. Returning home without it, she was roundly scolded. Later that day, a mysterious stranger appeared at the door, the master’s cloak in hand. Another time, called away from the kitchen while baking bread to attend to a sick woman, her fellow servants were amazed to discover a company of angels tending the ovens.

The lives of the saints abound with stories like these. Saint Brigid gave her father’s prized sword to a leper, and, after being exiled to a work in a dairy in response, she slipped dozens of hampers of butter out the side door. Elizabeth of Hungary was chased from her castle for pawning her jewels to build a hospital during a plague, while Robert Bellarmine scandalized Renaissance Rome by ripping the tapestries from his walls to have them cut up for clothing for the poor. The walls, he assured his fellow clerics, wouldn’t catch cold. Even Martin Luther, for all his hostility to works of supererogation, had to insist that his wife Katie keep the key to the family strongbox. Otherwise, he would be sure to give it all away.