SHAKEN TOGETHER
Give, and there will be gifts for you: a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap; because the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given back.
I love this text. It opens up a whole world for me. I have spent much of my monastic life as the monastery cellarer and I have learnt the importance of how I measure. In the monastic kitchen you are always making substitutes and adjustments. There have been times when I haven’t been quite sure that there was enough to go round. It has pretty much always worked out and no one has gone hungry.
St Benedict urges the cellarer to be mindful that the food provision must be adequate for the needs of the community. The cellarer is to divide the portion of bread allotted to each monk so that it lasts through the day. This is good and loving common sense. But when it comes to love, this is not something that is to be measured and weighed out to the last gram. The love that St Benedict’s monks are to show is to be the ‘warmest love’, ‘selfless’, ‘humble and sincere.’ (Ch 72) This really is the love that is ‘pressed down and shaken together’.
The Gospel challenge for me today is to be the one who gives first and to make my full measure run over.
Where is Christ calling you to give a full measure this Lent?
(Luke 6:36-38, Monday, Second Week of Lent)