Everywhere we look in this world we see need. If we open the eyes of our soul we will discover that we are surrounded by need. The needs of others are always an invitation from God to live generously. Every day many prayers go unanswered, and it seems to me that this is not because God did not want those prayers answered, but because he sent us to answer those prayers and we didn’t heed the call.
Fulton Sheen observed, “Never measure your generosity by what you give, but rather by what you have left.” Leo XIII wrote, “Once necessity and propriety are taken care of everything else belongs to the poor.”
But the Gospel invites us to a generosity that is mind blowing. If we immerse ourselves in the Gospel we realize that there is a level of generosity that goes beyond giving money and things to the poor. It is a generosity that challenges us to change the conditions that make them poor.
There will always be some that have more than others, and therefore, there will always be those that are comparatively poor. But why haven’t we made poverty history? Poverty is different than poor. Poverty is a form of violence, it dehumanizes people daily, every hour of every day. When we decide together, once and for all, to make poverty history, humanity will enter into a great new era of flourishing.
Each day I find myself challenged to be more generous than before, but when I come face to face with poverty, I realize I still have a long way to go.
Now, here is today’s generosity habit.
Read about poverty. Study poverty. Try to understand what the causes of poverty are in your city, your country, and around the world. Knowing what causes poverty is the first step to eradicating poverty in our world.
Matthew Kelly
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