A widow is saving her last portion of flour for
her final meal. She uses that flour to make bread to feed the prophet
Elijah. And in the midst of the scribes wearing luxurious
robes and sitting in the places of honor, a different poor widow very
generously puts her livelihood, two small coins, into the Temple's treasury. Just as
these two widows make sacrifices, Christ takes away our sins by the sacrifice
he makes. How do
these readings speak to us today in the realities we face in our lives of
faith? What do these readings tell us about the
importance of giving and how we are called to give?
If many would consider the gift of the poor
widow's mites as meager or insignificant, why would she make any gift at all? If it didn't matter to the treasury, wouldn't she
be better off keeping that money for herself and for her own needs? If she had let the rich and the well-off make all
the contributions themselves, couldn't she have kept her pennies and invested
them for the future? But perhaps the widow realized in her heart that
by not keeping her mites to herself and instead giving them to the Temple, she
was worshipping God and giving glory to God, which is what she did in this
humble act.
There can be different motivations behind our
giving, whether our giving is big or small. For example, we could give resentfully, hating to
part with what we give, doing so begrudgingly. We can give out of shame, feeling that we need to
keep up appearances, to give so that others won't look down on us. We can give in a calculated manner, thinking we
will get something back in return, looking out for our own benefit. But we can also give out of quite different
motives: we can give out of thanksgiving, giving out of the blessings that God
has given to us, giving in thanks for God's generosity in our lives. Why else would the widow give her last mites, her
whole livelihood, to the Temple treasury, to the house of God, if it wasn't out
of thanksgiving? What is the motivation for what and how we give
in our lives? Do we give mostly out of shame or begrudgingly,
or do we do so out of the thanksgiving that we feel in our hearts?
This week in our Catholic Church, we finish
commemorating National Vocation Awareness Week. It is interesting – just this past weekend, I was
chatting with members of our Hispanic community after one of their meetings,
and in the midst of our conversation, some of them asked me how I came to be a
priest in Mississippi, since I am grew up in Chicago and Los Angeles. We know all too well that we have a shortage of
vocations here in our diocese and throughout the Church. We now have priests from Mexico and India and
Vietnam replacing the Irish priest who are retiring, but what are we doing as
parishes or as a diocese to encourage vocations in our children and youth? I think of the two widows and the sacrifices they
made for the faith. Back to
the question that the Hispanics asked of me – I came to Mississippi because I
wanted to be a missionary in my own country, to serve in an area where priests
were desperately needed. We can always make excuses for not going to mass
or not practicing our faith. We can hold
onto grudges and hard feelings. We can
lash out in anger and frustration. What
can we do to put those things aside in order to raise our families in the
Church and to encourage our children and young people to live out their faith
in their daily lives? I visited a baptism class at our Church given in
Spanish. And as I spoke to the couples
about what they were undertaking, I spoke to them directly and bluntly out of
my concern for them as their pastor. I
told them that many of their faces I did not even recognize, that not only did
I not see them at mass every week, but some of them I don’t recall ever seeing
them at mass. What does baptism mean to us? What does being a disciple of Christ mean for
us? Do we want to live out a life of
faithful discipleship, or is baptism an end to itself and we don’t really worry
about what comes next?
Our readings today give us a lot to think about
as to how we give in our lives of faith and the way we live out the vocation to
which God calls us. May the way we give in our lives truly reflect
our journey of faith, may it give glory to God and reflect God's will for our
lives.
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