Early one Easter Sunday morning my mother discovered a remarkable thing—there were teeth marks in the kielbasa she had left out defrosting for the day of feasting for which she had already spent two days preparing.  Unbeknownst to her children snug in bed dreaming of the gargantuan chocolate bunnies my father bestowed on us each Easter, in the dark of the night and early dawn she was putting things in and taking things out of ovens and freezers and refrigerators.   But now she had discovered the bite mark.  She did not have mice in the kitchen but she DID have two lovely grandchildren.  So she rounded them up for a little talk, not because she was angry at the bite mark but because she was an empiricist at heart and wanted to solve the mystery with sound evidence.  When my niece, McKenna, finally ‘fessed up my mother was more concerned that she was hungry and needed something to eat then that she was the Polish equivalent of Eve in the Garden of Eatin.  No thank you grandma explained my niece; I just saw it there and wanted to try it.  Because the kielbasa was still FROZEN there were only the slightest of teeth marks on the sausage and no damage was done by that beautiful and inquisitive five year old.  My mother waited till my niece was away so as not to embarrass her and then brought each one of us into the kitchen to see the kielbasa, hear the story and have a good laugh.

I’m puzzled why we read the first reading from proverbs describing a generous God who asks us to be generous too and then assume that God in Luke is assumed to be the ethereal J. Edgar Hoover on the prowl for the red menace.  Jesus uses the images of light (a good thing especially when trying to locate kielbasa in the dark of night) and hidden things being found (remember the BEST part of hide and go seek – it was in finding and being found) and being given more and more at Christmas or birthdays or just because. 

So why assume that God is out to discover what we do bad – a central thesis of my grade school upbringing?

God looks for the GOOD we do so that God can rejoice with us.  We too need to look for the good that each of us does for others.  We need to rejoice in that.  We do not need to gloat over the evil others do.  Jesus never chilled with that crowd, did he?

The more I learned about cooking the more I realized the incredible and HIDDEN time my mother put into it.  When asking her the secret of great turkey, it was a slow oven and an alarm clock to awaken to put the bird in the oven at 3 and to baste it hourly.  Pretty cool!

The readings invited us to look for the good and rejoice in the generous.  When we find that good, it will be less probable that we will wish or do evil.