32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
November 8, 2015
10 AM & 12 Noon Liturgies
J.A. Loftus, S.J.
Halloween is over. The stores are already filled with holiday goodies.
Our local drug store is already overflowing with tinsel and bells. Depressing
that it gets started earlier and earlier each year! But by the end of this month
we will be celebrating the first Sunday of Advent. So Christmas is indeed not
far away.
And, bizarrely enough, in light of today’s readings, my thoughts turned
to a much-maligned Charles Dickens’ character called the miserly and largely
miserable, Mr. Scrooge. Why Mr. Scrooge? Because, in his early life, he
represents the diametric opposite of today’s scriptural lesson. Today is
entirely about graciousness and conspicuous generosity.
Today’s gospel comes at the end of a long line of public chastisements of
the scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders of Jesus’ own time. In Mark’s
gospel, Jesus repeatedly denounces the public displays of the scribes as they
try to impress others with their smiles, and their mostly empty talk of the law.
Pope Francis doesn’t seem to care much either for those he calls “the doctors
of the law.”
As Jesus says today: “They devour widow’s houses,” and, for the sake
of appearances, say long prayers and pretend to be generous. Their pseudograciousness, Jesus says in another place, smells like a whitened, open
sepulcher. He is not at all impressed with the “show.”
And so Jesus tries again to teach his disciples what is really counts.
Jesus takes his friends “people watching.” (Don’t you do that on occasion?
Just “people watch,” at the Mall perhaps?)
Jesus and his friends sit down in the Temple. He observes an old widow
by the treasury and teaches his disciples that she is putting in more to the
community and its treasury than all of the others. She gives all she has to
support the temple and she understands how the kingdom of God really
works.
It is worth noting that this gospel passage is the last public appearance
Jesus makes before his farewell talk to his disciples and his passion week
begins in Jerusalem. They are about to witness Jesus’ own generosity up
close! That is the context.
Because of that missing context, this gospel passage is often
misunderstood. It is not really just about money at all, or about poverty and
plenty, or about who has more and who has less. That’s too simplistic an
interpretation, no matter how attractive it remains for some preachers. It’s
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not at all about how much money you have; it’s about how freely you give to
support the needs of others. And those needs are sometimes physical,
sometimes emotional, and sometimes spiritual.
Jesus sounds angry, but his anger is motivated not simply by the fact
that this widow is poor as a penny. Jesus is angry that the widow had a right
to have more; she should have been better cared-for to begin with. That was
and still is the Law of Moses that trumps all other laws; widows had a very
special place in Jewish community. There is a social dimension to this sin.
Caring for each other in realistic ways is what it means to say you love God. It’s
all about generosity of spirit. And here was the Temple itself exploiting her–
in the name of God and religion!
I certainly do not want to discourage anyone from being or looking
conspicuously generous in his or her donations. By all means be as
conspicuous as you wish. Fr. Bob would not have it any other way! But it is
important to realize that it is not just about the amount one can contribute; it
is about a certain generosity of spirit to the community that will make all the
difference.
And it is equally important to hear the message of our first reading
today: that the poorest of the widows among us are sometimes visited by the
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greatest of prophets, like Elijah. And miracles can happen. And it is
important to be taught that even the greatest of prophets, like Elijah, get
hungry and need to be fed. And it is important to be taught that when all is
said and done (as I frequently say in funeral homilies), at the end of all of our
lives, generosity of spirit, largeness of heart, our magnanimity will be our
final judge. All that is really important is that we can say at the end: we have
lived fully and have loved well. We will be judged on whether we have lived
with magnanimity, with conspicuous generosity of spirit.
This other poor widow responds to Elijah not only with generosity but
also with conspicuous graciousness. These are the two outstanding qualities
of God’s reign. And they are two virtues that do not often appear together.
Keep remembering Scrooge!
The Israelites often sang Psalm 146, the same Psalm we sang today.
They knew that their God always was and always would be kind and gracious
and merciful. “Praise the Lord, my soul!” Listen to the verses of that Psalm
again sometime. They also knew that their God was and always would be
ridiculously generous to them. And they knew their God expected no less
from them in their behavior with each other.
There’s today’s take-home. My sisters and brothers, it really is all
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about graciousness and generosity. You cannot remain miserable and miserly
and inherit the Kingdom God has prepared for us all. The stodgy and the
stingy belong only in a sad Christmas Carol. Peace!
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