Suppose I found out what you had done, took the money back, and gave it to the poor myself. You would be angry with me, no doubt, and you might resent the poor. Your anger would simply be further evidence of your alienation from me and from your neighbors. I n much the same way God has graced his people Israel and his people the Church. What he has given us is a great treasure of grace and love with the clear instruction that we share this treasure with others in the world.
T hat is what happened to the ancient Israelites at several points in their history.
God chose Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to be the forefathers of a great people who would be a blessing to the world. He delivered his people from slavery in Egypt and formed a covenant with them at Mt. Sinai so that they would become a nation which would bring all the world to God. But as the history of the Israelites unfolded there were many times when the people kept for themselves precisely that which God had given them to share with others. Today's gospel shows how extreme that tendency had become, when otherwise faithful Jews in the synagogue at Nazareth became angry when Jesus told of God's love for two foreigners, a widow in Sidon and a leper from Syria. T he same thing has happened to the Church over the centuries and even in our own time.