Let us endeavor to heed this call to repentance or to ‘cleansing’ our lives in preparation for heeding the call to holiness this Advent season. Let us make that decision to straighten our ways now before it becomes too late.

Our primary purpose in this life is "to be holy" and everyone is being called to be holy. This Advent season is the best time to start doing so. We can heed this call in the ordinariness of our daily life by “accomplishing ordinary actions in an extraordinary way.”

In 3 weeks time it will be Christmas. This event it seems has lost its religious significance. We are all so focused on its social aspect - shopping, parties, reunions, gifts - we forget we are supposed to prepare our hearts for Jesus' birth and his coming.

A life of holiness starts w/ the call to conversion & repentance. This Advent season is a good time to heed this call via self introspection of our lives. Is there a need to reform our ways of acting & thinking at this time? Is there a need to change our value system?

When we are poor in spirit we will be able to offer God all that we have with all generosity and to calmly look to the future totally dependent on the economy of the Kingdom and submissive to everything that He allows to happens to us.

If we have this mindset it is easier to practice detachment from them. When we have detachment, it would not be too difficult to give them all up should God were to demand them from us. Such poverty of spirit is what Jesus demands from us.

And so our widow’s mite could be anyone or anything that is very valuable to us but which we would readily offer back to God if such be His will for us. Note that nothing in this world is our own. We are only stewards of the earthly goods that God allows us to have.

What is our widow’s mite? Acc to an article I read, a widow’s mite refers not only to money but to everything that we possess: the material, spiritual, mental & social goods that we have including our loved ones & even our peace of mind.

Okay lang yan hehehe.

To be shrewd and cunning is not always bad when we are trying to invest in our spiritual life. Let us pray for the grace to be more generous with the resources that God places in our hands. Let us pray that we may be able to make good use of earthly riches to promote God's reign in this life.

We are all, in one way or another, dishonest stewards of God w regard to our time, talent & treasures. We squander them unnecessarily. Jesus exhorts us to be shrewd by using our earthly goods to be generous. Thus we will lay up treasure 4 us so that we may take hold of the life that is truly life.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus would want us to imitate the dishonest servant, NOT in his deception or fraud BUT in his shrewdness.Tobit 12:8 tells us that almsgiving saves one from damnation. Very likely it is the giving of alms which is the act of shrewdness that Jesus was talking about.