Tradition Day by Day: March 1

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March 1

The act of kindness

he Lord Jesus, true teacher of the precepts that lead to salvation, wished to urge upon the apostles in his own time and all believers today the Christian duty of almsgiving. He therefore related the parable of the steward to make us realize that nothing in this world really belongs to us. We have been entrusted with the administration of our Lord's property to use what we need with thanksgiving, and to distribute the rest among our fellow servants according to the needs of each one. We must not squander the wealth entrusted to us, nor use it on superfluities, for when the Lord comes we shall be required to account for our expenditure.

Finally, at the end of the parable, the Lord adds: Use wordly wealth to make friends with the poor, so that when it fails you, when you have spent all you possessed on the needs of the poor and have nothing left, they may welcome you into eternal dwellings.

In other words, these same poor people will befriend you by assuring your salvation, for Christ, the giver of eternal rewards, will declare that he himself received the acts of kindness done to them.

Gaudentius of Brescia

Augustine Day By Day

The Augustinians - St. Thomas of Villanova Province

From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.

HTML text prepared by David P. Steelman