Common Good

We work hard to provide for our family. We save and invest for the future. We struggle to maintain the balance between work and family, sometimes forgetting the purpose of the blessings from God. Everything we have from God isn’t for us. It is for the common good.

The prayers of the Church are filled with request for blessings, physical and otherwise, from God. One of my favorites is from the wedding which says, “Fill their houses with bountiful food, and with every good thing, that they may have to give to them that are in need.”

We don’t ask God to bless the new couple for their sake, but for the sake of others. That is the point Saint Paul is trying to teach us in today’s reading from 1^st Corinthians. It is a good lesson for us, so early in the Nativity Fast, now that we are surrounded by holiday consumerism.

Brethren, to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are inspired by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one -individually as he wills.

1^st Corinthians 12.7-11

If we choose to spend the Nativity Fast ‘just’ fasting from food and not from greed, then we fail to get the point. Soon we will gather for our Thanksgiving Feast with family and friends. We will eat more than we need, and hoard leftovers, maybe even throw away perfectly good food.

Some of us will spend the next several weeks shopping online for the ‘perfect deal’ on some gift nobody really needs in the first place. We do it all in the name of ‘the holidays’ without considering the impact on our souls. What might Christ have to say about our feasts?

At that time, Jesus entered the home of a certain ruler of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat bread. And he said to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” When one of those who sat at table with him heard this, he said to him, “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!”

Luke 14.1, 12-15

Of course, we can rationalize our greed by saying, “It isn’t for me. It is for my family.” Well and good, but does that really meet the criteria of generosity? Aren’t we our family in the first place? Doesn’t the wedding prayer refer to those outside the family?

This year for the Nativity Fast I invite you to consider how you can use what God has given you, either in talents or physical blessings, for the common good. Of course, I still want you to fast. Of course, you will still have a family feast. Maybe this year we can look beyond ourselves.

For inspiration to get it done, I offer you the story of Saint Gregory the Wonderworker, who the Church commemorates today. His love and generosity, by God’s grace and miracles for total strangers, converted an entire city from paganism to Christianity.

If Saint Gregory had kept his gift of wonderworking ‘to himself’ the city might still be pagan. This is what happens when we use our blessings for the common good instead of greed. It starts one faithful believer at a time. Today YOU are that believer.