Monday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s Gospel challenges us about our intentions in doing good works: do we desire repayment and status, or is it an act of love toward neighbor and God.
Jesus gives us the story of a dinner party and He contrasts a guest list comprised of friends and distinguished folks versus one with only the poor and the stranger on the VIP list. The backdrop to this teaching is the social culture of Jesus's day, where dinner parties were not just a meal with friends, but were hosted to show off, or to win, social status and favor. Dinners were places where you signaled your wealth and social status or sought to win social favor from others. These dinner parties were not neutral moments of sharing the table of another.
Jesus challenges the culture of his time by inviting his contemporaries to think about these dinner parties through a different lens: what if you threw a dinner for those who can do nothing for you, what if you gave out love that sought nothing in return?
Jesus asks us the same question: where do you give only to receive back in return, and where can you learn to give out of Love of God expecting nothing but His love and grace back in return?
“Lord, teach me to be generous…to be to labor and not to ask for reward, except knowing that I am doing your will.”