THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

[cappie]

We live by the obedience of faith, a faith that shows itself in works of charity and self-giving. That’s the lesson of the two widows in today’s liturgy. 

The widow in the First Reading isn’t even a Jew, yet she trusts in the word of Elijah and the promise of his Lord. Facing sure starvation, she gives all that she has, her last bit of food—feeding the man of God before herself and her family.

The widow in the Gospel also gives all that she has, offering her last bit of money to support the work of God’s priests in the Temple.

 Between the Court of the Gentiles and the Court of the Women there was the Beautiful Gate. It may well be that Jesus had gone to sit quietly there after the argument and the tension of the Court of the Gentiles and the discussions in the cloisters. In the Court of the Women there were thirteen collecting boxes called “The Trumpets,” because they were so shaped. Each of them was for a special purpose, for instance to buy corn or wine or oil for the sacrifices. They were for contributions for the daily sacrifices and expenses of the Temple. Then came a widow. She flung in two small coins. 
 
Mark tells us that Jesus observed people making their contributions to the temple treasury. The rich came forward and made substantial donations.  
Then a poor widow came along and dropped in "two small coins ." The coin so called was a lepton, which literally means a thin one. It was the smallest of all coins and was worth less than one cent.   However, Jesus valued her small gift more than the substantial ones made by the wealthy.
 
While the poor widow's donation would make no difference  but her few coins made a big difference in her life. As Jesus remarked, "she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood."

While the substantial contributions of the wealthy would excite anyone  those gifts did not affect the lifestyle of those donors. As Jesus said, "they have all contributed from their surplus wealth." They gave what they did not need. Their giving involved no sacrifice on their part.
 
In the Gospel, Jesus teaches us that it is not the amount of our gift that matters, but rather the amount of sacrifice it takes for us to make that gift.
The most difficult part of sacrifice, understood this way, is that since God's self-giving is total, God asks that ours be the same. This is the real meaning of this women's poverty. In the story, of course, the poverty is physical - with minimal food or money, and the call comes to give it away. But what God is really asking for is that our whole self be entrusted to God in love. This becomes concretized in the invitation to let go of something that, in our vulnerability and poverty, feels essential to our life and well-being. While we are unlikely ever to face the exact same circumstances as these widows, at certain times in our lives we do experience such a call to give far more than we believe we can spare. Blessed are we if, like them, we have the grace to realize in such a moment that whatever it is we are clinging to is mere dust in comparison to the rich relationship that we are being offered!

In our ordinary daily lives, of course, we are usually dealing with much more mixed situations.  Taking time to meditate on these stories, can help us discern the call to sacrifice as it manifests more subtly in our everyday lives. 

First of all, the scriptures remind us that genuine sacrifice must be a response from the heart, not just the fulfilment of the expectations of our tradition or of other persons. Even more importantly, they invite us to loosen our fixation on whatever we are being asked to "give up" and look instead toward what is being asked of us relationally. When we can respond with faith and trust within that relationship, the "giving up" becomes an act of love. Finally, these scriptures offer us a new perspective on our experiences of vulnerability and poverty. Paradoxically, it is in just such moments that "giving all" at last becomes truly possible.
 
If we all gave as the widow did we would imitate the woman's generosity, we would positively affect those in need, and we would imitate the generosity of Jesus who sacrificed all he had for us. His giving certainly made a difference to him and a difference to all humanity.  

It is a strange and lovely thing that the person whom the New Testament and Jesus hand down to history as a pattern of generosity was a person who gave a gift of almost no value in the eyes of the world. 

And again we are called to imitate His sacrifice of love in our own lives. We will be judged, not by how much we give—for the scribes and wealthy contribute far more than the widow. Rather, we will be judged by whether our gifts reflect our livelihood, our whole beings, all our heart and soul, mind and strength.

Are we giving all that we can to the Lord—not out of a sense of forced duty, but in a spirit of generosity and love.

We may feel that we have not much in the way of material gifts or personal gifts to give to Christ, but, if we put all that we have and are at his disposal, he can do things with it and with us that are beyond our imaginings.