Giving Our Best, not only our leftovers

BY CLAIRE SEELINGER DEVEY

“The church gets the leftovers,” lamented the young priest. “After selecting from what they want, and after re-gifting to their friends, the Church then receives what still remains; the least-wanted items.”

The evening after I heard that homily, the same message came to me through a friend on Facebook.

It was the story of a woman and her daughter who, when hungry and in need, did not receive the leftovers of someone else’s meal, but the delicious, freshly-made hot meal itself.

The author was remembering how her mother had waited and waited for her overdue assistance check to arrive but the food ran out long before then. The mother was tempted to steal but instead she went begging to her neighbors, knocking on their door at dinnertime.

“I don’t care about myself, but my five-year old has only eaten potatoes for the last month and now we do not even have those,” she explained.

Without hesitation her kind neighbor left her doorway and immediately collected everything from the dinner table that she had prepared for herself and her husband then packaged it up for the strangers at her door.

And that was the lesson the young five-year old girl carried with her into her adulthood: generosity is a disposition as much as it is an act. When you are called on to give–do you hesitate and then first sort through what you have, reserving the best for yourself or your family and only giving your leftovers to the poor? 

“If it’s not good enough for you, it’s not good enough for those in need either,” the author concluded. This is what she had seen as a five-year old that day. The neighbor with the full table might still have opted to go and make a sandwich for this hungry mother and child at her door but the author felt that the thought had never even occurred to her.

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Mother Teresa (now St. Teresa of Calcutta) used to preach the same message: Give God your best. Give to Jesus the best of what you have to offer.

To her that meant that the first uninterrupted hours of her day were given to silent prayer. Before the needs of her community of Sisters or the needs of the poor crowded in, she would kneel in the chapel and offer her silence and her presence to God, even if she was distracted or tired or felt that her prayer was poor.

Still, it was the best she had to give.

For those of us who are living different vocations, it might mean giving our most cheerful hours of the day (for some that means later in the day, if we are not “morning people”!) to our families instead of reserving them for ourselves or “spending”’ them on our careers or personal pursuits.

But always remember to reserve some of the best you have to give from your pantries, your time, and your hearts for God, for His Church, and for His beloved poor.