SPIRITUAL LIVING
Prayer and Devotions
How God Measures
by Father Paul Campbell, LC
Reflect on your giving. Are you as generous in supporting the Church and evangelization as Jesus wants you to be?
November 26, 2007
Monday of the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Luke 21: 1-4
When Jesus looked up he saw some wealthy people putting their offerings into the treasury and he noticed a poor widow putting in two small coins. He said, "I tell you truly, this poor widow put in more than all the rest; for those others have all made offerings from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole livelihood."
Introductory Prayer: Lord, thank you for this time to be with you. How much I need your presence in my life. Open my heart to hear your word and to respond to it with love in everything I do today.
Petition: Lord, teach me the virtue of generosity.
1. The Wealthy Give from Their Surplus We see Jesus in the Temple watching the crowd of pilgrims placing their offerings into the Temple’s treasury boxes. They had come from around the world, to the one place to worship the God of Israel. Some in the crowd that day were wealthy and able to put in large sums of money. This was good and showed a measure of generosity, but they gave from their surplus. They had to do with less, but they didn’t have to do without.
2. The Widow Gives All That She Has Among the crowd was a widow who placed two small coins in the treasury box. It was all that she had. She held nothing back for herself. Her poverty encouraged her to trust in God’s providence. Our tendency is to trust in ourselves and material things. We look for security in wealth, which might draw us away from God. Poverty strips us of material props and will draw us towards God alone.
3. God Sees the Smallest Act of Charity The widow’s coins were not too small for God to notice. He sees everything and values everything according to its intrinsic worth. We often see just the outward appearance of things. To us, the one who put the most in the treasury box would have been the most generous. We might not even have noticed the widow that day. On God’s scales, however, the widow gave more than all the others, because she gave all she had. God loves the generosity of those who give without measure. This is how God loves us: Jesus didn’t measure out his generosity on the cross, but gave everything to free us from sin.
Conversation with Christ: Jesus help me to be generous. Help me to be free of needless worries about material things and to trust you and your providence. Many times I feel that I should be giving more. Help me to respond to the desires that you are encouraging in my heart. Help to replace my worries with an unbounded love and confidence in you.
Resolution: I will reflect on my current level of giving. Am I as generous in supporting the Church and evangelization as Jesus wants me to be?
1 comment:
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/279798
Violinists, cellists and piano players can be exciting or captivating. But few of them can make us fall in mad, passionate love like a singer.
And you can bet that anyone who wasn't smitten by soprano Measha Brueggergosman before attending her solo recital at Roy Thomson Hall yesterday afternoon left the auditorium with their pulse racing.
She may have only just turned 30, but there are only a handful of pros around the world who can match the Fredericton, N.B., native for fabulousness. She has the voice and technique. She also has that extra ingredient that bumps a performer into the seduction zone.
As she breezed through cabaret-flavoured 20th-century art songs from England (Benjamin Britten), France (Francis Poulenc and Erik Satie), Germany (Arnold Schoenberg) and the United States (by living composers Ned Rorem and William Bolcom), it would be easy to underestimate the force of artistry needed to make this program work.
Most of these songs were meant to be sung in a salon, not in a concrete-lined 2,500-seat concert hall.
These pieces demand finesse to properly shape exquisite stories or jokes in music without the benefit of an orchestra or amplification.
Brueggergosman and ever-elegant piano accompanist Roger Vignoles not only jumped these hurdles but added pirouettes before each graceful landing. The soprano convinced us that she wouldn't be happier anywhere else but right there, onstage, doing her best to please our eyes and ears.
The recital was broadcast live on CBC Radio Two, so that listeners across the country could share in the pleasure. What they wouldn't have seen were the diva's gowns – the first a great sail of royal-blue silk, the second a striking burgundy-plum dress courtesy of the reality-TV design competition Project Runway Canada.
The program itself was clever, mixing more serious songs with lighter ones – most from Brueggergosman's new album, Surprise.
Unlike most classical singers, this soprano has built a beginning to what will hopefully be a great, long career on recitals and concert performances with orchestras, rather than in opera. But that will change for us soon.
Toronto's Opera Atelier announced yesterday that Brueggergosman will sing the role of Elettra in the company's spring production of Idomeneo by Mozart.
Her most captivating performances yesterday were in the songs by Britten and Bolcom, with which she created bookends in songs about love.
But the real love was the one she is igniting between artist and audience wherever she performs.
John Terauds
CLASSICAL MUSIC CRITIC
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