FAKE OR GENUINE?

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mk 12:38-44

Nowadays, there are so many fakes and counterfeits. There are fake signatures, fake diplomas, fake passports, fake certificates, fake titles, and fake identities. Even some faces are also fake. Cosmetic surgery has also become a very lucrative business because of the need for body features that are other than the original if not the natural. Gender-reclassification is common. The rise in a woman’s breasts or the drop in a woman’s fats is directly proportional to the increase of cosmetic surgeons. By the way, sometimes wives or husbands are also fake.

Recently, news broke out. Fake five Philippine peso coins are circulating. Authorities, however, are quick to inform us how to detect if a coin is counterfeit or real. All we need to have, they say, is a magnet. A magnet attracts a fake coin while a real coin is never magnetized.

God is never magnetized by our offerings. He is never after our material gifts. What use does God have for money? He is infinitely self-sufficient. He is never impressed by anything we can give Him except one. God is after our hearts.

God cannot be deceived by the quantity or quality of our offerings. He sees through them and knows what really lies in our hearts as we make our offering. Whether our gift is large or small, if our gift comes not from the heart, our gift is rubbish.

When we see a person makes a large donation, we say “Wow!” When small, we are careful not to react with an “Oh!” God simply says thank you when a donation – large or small – comes from the heart.

Because God sees our hearts, He knows if our gift is fake or real. As far as God is concerned, it is not the karat that makes gold genuine but the heart. It is not the cut that make a diamond brilliant but the heart. It is not the sum that makes a donation valuable but the heart. And the heart is always truthful; it is the lips that lie.

The widow in the Gospel today dropped more than two small coins to the temple treasury. She gift was all that she had. She gave her heart. She donated her life. Her offering was not fake but real because she must have felt the pain of her offering as her two coins touch the bottom of the horn-shaped coffer with a tiny “cling” sound. But she was not sad about the pain of her sacrifice. She was glad to give all that she had. She gave not only with her whole heart; she gave her heart away.

As we offer our gifts to God, let us appraise if our offerings are fake or genuine. There are three questions we need to answer.

First, do we give more than what we can actually give? It sounds illogical and impossible to give more than what we have, but it does happen sometimes when we give more than what we can give because what we give is actually not ours.

I remember a well-respected Jesuit professor, Fr. Gerald Healy, during my seminary days when corruption was already very rampant in Philippine society. Fr Healy’s words were very disturbing when he said, “And how do the rich justify their ill-gotten wealth?” “By supporting seminarians,” he added. While not all the well-to-do families I know fall under Fr. Healy’s generalization, we are lying if we say his claim is false.

If we give more than what we actually have, where do we source out what we give? When we give more than what we actually have, our offerings are fake.

Second, do we give less than what we can really give? This second question is a reverse of the first. While some give more than what they can honestly give, others give less than what they can truly give. They are stingy when it comes to God. He is never their first priority. Worse, sometimes, He is even last in their list. God never complains. But their offerings – because lesser than what they can truly give –do not even reach Him at all.

A man appeared before God in the afterlife. God welcomed and brought him to his afterlife dwelling. “But God,” the man complained, “why is my assigned house here in heaven made of paper and straw only?” “You see, My son,” God explained, “this is all you sent Me when you were still on earth.” “Oh my,” the man regretted, “I should have sent all the granite piled up in my bodega.”

If we give God less than what we can really give Him, where goes what we withhold from Him? When we give God less than what we have, our gifts are not genuine.

Third, do we feel the pain in our giving? True generosity is determined not by what we give but by what we have left after we give. This criterion can be very painful.

St. Bernard said, “The true measure of love is love without measure.” Gifts are tokens of love. Their real worth is in the love that makes them possible. For Jesus, unless we feel the pain in our giving, we have not truly given. It can be very easy for a millionaire to give half of his million away because he still has the other half in the bank and, given the right financial strategy, it will grow even more than his original one million. Real Christian generosity, however, requires not a fraction of his million but all of it. St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians has this to say:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death –
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:5-11)

When we give not more than what we truly have, when we give not less than what we actually have, and when we feel the pain in our giving, then our gift to God is genuine, not fake. Such a gift does not need a large sum but a large heart for God. Fake gifts may come from the pocket but true gifts come from the heart.