The Living Faith

I am sure many of our big cities we can find locations of USPS Collection box-blue boxes facilities for us to dump some of our mails or even packages. On specified hours they are being collected by our Post office-workers for arranging their deliveries. In the same style, in many of our churches and especially in Catholic shrines this kind of boxes-taller than ordinary post collection boxes in which the devotees are supposed to dump their gifts and donations written with their personal special intentions. Hence earlier days these boxes were labeled as the ‘dump boxes’.

Practice of taking and dumping collections in religious circles has been a longtime ritual for pleasing their gods. Very disappointingly humans, who empty them or collecting the collections from those boxes or baskets, do not spend the money for which it has been filled; or the humans who fill those boxes do not hold a right intentions over their gifts. In Christianity it may be the same situation due to ignorance and carelessness of what our Master has instructed on it.

As his custom, Jesus was going regularly to the Temple and synagogues. He would have watched the disorderly and unjust ways of using the collection ritual. As we read in the Gospel of Mark (12: 38-44), he became furious and angry over it and vehemently criticized it. In his time, like the Scribes, almost all religious leaders were corrupted and money-and-honor-mongers. This is why he reprimanded them saying: “Beware of the scribes, who like to go around in long robes and accept greetings in the marketplaces, seats of honor in synagogues, and places of honor at banquets. They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext, recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation.”

Jesus may sound like totally being against the custom of collecting tithes in the form of money and other good. Yes, he was indignant toward the horrible abuses and misuses were occurring in this kind of religious practice of offerings, but he never replaced these practices. He knew well that there are valid reasons for such practices of offering to the God. He accepted these rituals therefore as symbols and signs of outward expression of our love-response to God.

God expects every one of his children to show in deed their love and gratitude toward him and his love. There is only one twofold commandment to please the Lord; and that is, “love thy God with your whole heart, whole mind and whole soul and with all your strength, and to express such love visibly and tangibly, love your neighbor as yourself”. Undebatably, Jesus observed these practices in accordance to his Judaic religion. However as the Son, he knew the deeper mind of his Father. He is quoted saying when he came down to this world: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; holocausts and sin offerings you took no delight in. Then I said, 'As is written of me in the scroll, Behold, I come to do your will, O God.'" (Heb. 10: 5-7) He was very clear in his approach to religious ritual of tithing and offering. Not only this ritual, any practice that we do in the name of religion must be so appropriate that it pleases God the Great and the Holy. Hence as he opposed the wrong handling of such ritual, he offered his disciples a right way of dealing with this wonderful religious custom of offering, tithing and donating to religions.

Bible gives us two widows as the rolemodels in this correct way of tithing or offering: One widow in OT (1 Kings 17: 9-24) and the other in NT (Mk. 12: 38-44). Pointing out what the poor widows did, the Spirit of God instructs us that, ‘offerings’ in the sight of God should be a sign of our total acceptance and recognition of God's providence. Never we should give only what is surplus in us; rather, as those exemplary widows, try to give really what we can with a sincere motivation and single-heartedness. Whatever we have belongs to him, he is the owner and we are only the stewards and instruments in his hands; therefore we are ready to offer everything to him even our own self if need be. Selfishness has no room inside heaven. Every bit of our selfishness must be broken to pieces and burnt in the fire of love. It is for this as one of the reasons why Jesus appreciated our offerings to God.

Besides, even though God does not need our offerings or money, he needs our efforts continuously to empty ourselves and make him to fill us; he offers too many of us ample and lucky chances and opportunities to gather his riches and become prosperous. Such divine benevolence is for nothing but to be the cooperators in his job of providence, especially to those at the low level of their life. God through Jesus commands us in all religious practices we should include the love of neighbor. Every outward act we do as expression of our love to Him must be either through the love of others or together with the love of the same. We can have private conversation with God in prayer and in religious ceremonies, but if it is without any relation to our neighbor who is outside there, such a purely self-centered religious act cannot be a genuine expression of our love to God.

The giving of ourselves and of what possess, even if they are like ‘widow's mite’ they are mightier than all prayers and other religious practices. God, on his part, will surely reward us as he did in the case of the widow in the Old Testament. That poor widow of Zarephath offered to hungry and thirsty man of God what was available in her home-small cupful of water and a little cake. For such hospitality, “the jar of flour did not go empty, nor the jug of oil run dry, according to the word of the LORD spoken through Elijah.” (1 Kgs. 17: 10-16)

Let us also remind ourselves the golden promise of Jesus regarding his reciprocal gifts to us when we do these wonderful and generous religious practice of paying our tithes to the Church with full understanding and without break, without murmuring: “Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you." (Lk. 6:

38)