Potential vs Actual

The sixth-class student went to her mother with this homework question: “What’s the difference between potential and actual?”

Mom thought for a moment, and then replied, “Go ask your dad, your brother and your sister what they would do if they found a million euro and no one knew they had. Would they turn it in or keep it?”

The student goes first to her older brother with the question. “Are you kidding? That would pay for college and set me up in business. It’s probably drug money anyway. Of course l’d keep it.” She writes down his answer and then goes to her sister.

“Of course I’d keep it, silly. It’s probably a bribe or payoff that got lost anyway. I’d shop till I dropped and then I’d bank the rest. I’d be set for life.” The student writes down her answer and then goes to talk to Dad.

“Well, anybody who loses a million euro can probably afford it. I’d do over the house, put you kids through school, and then have something left for my retirement.” The student goes back to Mom and shows her the answers.

“Now do you see the difference between potential and actual?” she says. “Potentially, we are an honest family but actually you and I live with three conniving thieves.”

In today’s Gospel, Jesus chides our tendency to rationalize our self-centeredness, to congratulate ourselves on our “faithfulness” by acting in ways that are the direct opposite of that faith. As the sixth-class student learns, our potential is realized only if we actually live the principles and beliefs we utter in prayers and creeds.

Christ calls us to embrace “mustard seed” faith -to believe that even the slightest act of goodness, done in faith and trust in God’s presence, has meaning in the reign of God. The mustard seed challenges us to grab hold of the opportunities we have for planting and reaping a harvest of justice, compassion and reconciliation in our own piece of the earth.

Faith begins with the gratitude and humility of the servant in today’s Gospel: to understand that the gift of faith requires justice, compassion and forgiveness; to realize, in the clarity of God’s love, how blessed we have been; to see ourselves and others as brother and sister “servants” at the table of the Father.