A Tale of Two Silos
“He
instructed them to take nothing
for the journey.”
(St. Mark 6.8)
What
have you taken with you for
the journey?
... the journey that you are
now on: the one taking
you, whether you will it or
not, to the end of all things,
and beyond ... to God, to what
has been prepared for you from
before all time?
It is too much
... whatever it is.
What is between the soles of
your feet and the earth ...
that alone you may take with
you, and in the end, even that
you must leave behind.
Whether victims of the Great
Depression of the 1930s or the
Great Recessions of 1980 or
2008, our parents had unwittingly
infected us with their painfully
acquired insecurity: having
learned how quickly all that
they possessed can be lost more
quickly still, they had erected
barns in their abundance against
the time of famine, of need.
For many of them, the silos
of grain could not be emptied
in a lifetime, but still they
were left ... against the time
of need ... to dry unto dust,
closed from the light, hidden
from the world, lest the world
see it in its need ... and beg
for it.
... and they died, so many of
them — in great abundance but
in far greater poverty.
We took the stock and store,
and learned their lessons well,
keeping for ourselves what we
do not need even in the gaunt
face of the pressing need of
others – against the time of
our own need, against
the time of our own want.
When the sons of Jacob came
to us, we closed the vaults
of our great harvests, and bolted
the doors ... even though they
were our very brothers, even
though Jacob was our father
...
Unlike the great Patriarch Joseph
who fell upon the shoulders
of his eleven brothers in tears
– the brothers who had left
him to die in a cistern in the
desert and only through the
mercy of Ruben was sold into
slavery instead – when these
same brothers came looking for
grain in Egypt in a time of
great famine ... Joseph gave
them to overflowing from the
stores in his possession – we,
to whom no evil has been done
by the poor, turn them away
...
We have marked out our journey
and carefully laid store our
grain ... that we do not come
to have nothing. And if we have
not spent it, as our parents
had not spent it, we keep it
for our children to keep it
for their children — and the
grain rots and becomes a testimony
to our selfishness, declaring
in its putrescence that we are
fools.
Yes, we know our way in the
world — which is the way
of the world, and has
ever been the way of the
world.
For this reason, for our inexpungable
selfishness, Jesus well knew
that,
“the poor you will always have
with you.”
Our silos are bloated ... almost
as much as the the stomachs
of the starving children in
Sub-Sahara Africa. They die
by the day in the thousands
— for want of a teaspoon of
grain. They die in their childhood
with nothing and go to God.
We die in our old age, filled
with years, stock portfolios,
great silos, and in peril of
Hell.
We know our journey in
this world
... and think that our
journey to God will be the same
We will go well-provisioned
with perfunctory acts of piety,
having fulfilled the letter
of the law while purblind to
the meaning of the law. We take
our stock and store of spiritual
silos and think that they will
be acceptable to God —
who told us to take nothing
for the journey ...
knowing full well that we have
relied on our clever resourcefulness,
our self-redemptive piety ...
and not His mercy.
These spiritual silos — no less
than those filled with our grain
— will testify against us that
we have not known our brother,
have turned a deaf ear to the
cry of our sister, been heedless
of Jacob. For from the abundance
of our spiritual silos,
we should have emptied those
material silos overflowing
with grain — and then dismantled
both — as Jesus tells us
today — to take nothing for
the journey.
This is the journey, the path,
that leads to God, in obedience
to God. It is nothing less than
utter trust in God that
Jesus calls us to — both materially
and spiritually — and the one
will ineluctably reflect the
other.
In the end, at your last breath,
the rush of truth will come
upon you, and all that you have
kept for yourself —
and from Him ...
in Himself and the least of
His Little Ones ... will witness
against you, in itself, and
in the little ones from whom
you kept what God had entrusted
you to give them – as Joseph
gave to Jacob and his sons –
his brothers.
I ask you again: what will you
take for the journey ... and
what morsels will you leave
behind for those who worked
your fields but did not eat
your grain...?
Do you not see? His ways are
not your ways. It is for this
reason that Christ tells us
that, “He
that will save his life, shall
lose it: and he that shall lose
his life for my sake, shall
find it.” (Matthew 16.25)
You do not see that you stand
to lose nothing ... only your
own insecurity and selfishness.
What a blessed loss!
Even ... even,
when God takes, He gives ...
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
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Totally Faithful
to the Sacred
Deposit of Faith
entrusted to the
Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia
modicum habes virtutem,
et servasti verbum
Meum, nec non negasti
Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works
... that you have
but little power,
and yet you have
kept My word, and
have not denied
My Name.”
(Apocalypse 3.8)
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