32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year B
Mark 12: 38-44
In His teaching Jesus said, ‘Beware of the scribes who like to walk about in long robes, to be greeted respectfully in the market squares, to take the front seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets; these are the men who devour the property of widows and for show offer long prayers. The more severe will be the sentence they receive.’
He sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the treasury, and many of the rich put in a great deal. A poor widow came and put in two small coins, the equivalent of a penny. Then He called His disciples and said to them, ‘In truth I tell you, this poor widow has put more in than all who have contributed to the treasury; for they have all put in money they could spare, but she in her poverty has put in everything she possessed, all she had to live on.’
1 Kings 7:10-16; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44
To watch out for hypocrites and to watch the poor widow
Pope Francis
The scene described in the Gospel of today’s Liturgy takes place inside the Temple of Jerusalem. Jesus looks, he looks at what is happening in this most sacred of places; and he sees how the scribes love to walk around to be seen, greeted and revered, and in order to have the places of honour. And Jesus adds that they “devour widows’ houses and recite long prayers in order to be seen” (cf. Mk 12:40). At the same time, another scene catches his eyes: a poor widow, precisely one of those exploited by the powers that be, puts “everything she had, her whole living” (Mk 12:44) in the Temple treasury. This is what the Gospel says, she puts everything she had to live on in the treasury. The Gospel presents us with this striking contrast: the rich who give from their surplus wealth to make themselves seen, and a poor woman, who without seeming to, offers every little bit she has. Two symbols of human attitudes.
Jesus watches the two scenes. And it is this very verb — “to watch” — that sums up his teaching: “we must watch out for” those who live their faith with duplicity, like the scribes, so as not to become like them; whereas we must “watch” the widow, and take her as a model. Let us reflect on this: to watch out for hypocrites and to watch the poor widow.
First of all, to watch out for hypocrites, that is, to be careful not to base our life on the cult of appearances, the external, and the exaggerated care of one’s own image. And most importantly, to be careful not to bend faith around our own interests. In the name of God, those scribes covered-up their own vainglory, and even worse, they used religion to conduct their own affairs, abusing their authority and exploiting the poor. Here we see that very bad attitude that we still see in many places today, clericalism, this being above the humble, exploiting them, “beating” them, considering oneself perfect. This is the evil of clericalism. This is a warning for all time and for everyone, Church and society: never take advantage of one’s role to crush others, never make money off the backs of the weakest! And to watch out so as not to fall into vanity, so as not to be fixated on appearances, losing what is essential and living superficially. Let us ask ourselves, it will help us: do we want to be appreciated and gratified by what we say and what we do, or rather to be of service to God and neighbour, especially the weakest? Let us watch out for falsehood of the heart, for hypocrisy which is a dangerous illness of the soul! It is a dualism of thought, a dual judgement, as the word itself says: “to judge below”, to appear one way and “hypo”, beneath, to think in a different way. Doubles, people with double souls, a duality of the soul.
And in order to heal this illness, Jesus invites us to watch the poor widow. The Lord denounces the exploitation of this woman, who, in making her offering, must return home without even the little she had to live on. How important it is to free the sacred from ties with money! Jesus had already said it elsewhere: you cannot serve two masters. Either you serve God — and we think he will say “or the devil”, no — either God or money. He is a master, and Jesus says we must not serve him. But, at the same time, Jesus praises the fact that this widow puts all she has into the treasury. She has nothing left, but finds her everything in God. She is not afraid of losing the little she has because she trusts in God’s abundance, and God’s abundance multiplies the joy of those who give. This also makes us think of that other widow, the one of the prophet Elijah, who was about to make a flatbread with the last of her flour and the last of her oil; Elijah says to her: “Feed me” and she gives; and the flour never runs out, it is a miracle (cf. 1 Kings 17:9-16). In the face of people’s generosity, the Lord always goes further, is more generous. But it is He, not our avarice. This is why Jesus proposes her as a teacher of faith, this woman: she does not go to the Temple to clear her conscience, she does not pray to make herself seen, she does not show off her faith, but she gives from her heart generously and freely. The sound of her few coins is more beautiful than the grandiose offerings of the rich, since they express a life sincerely dedicated to God, a faith that does not live by appearances but by unconditional trust. Let us learn from her: a faith without external frills, but interiorly sincere; a faith composed of humble love for God and for our brothers and sisters.
And now let us turn to the Virgin Mary, who with a humble and transparent heart made her entire life a gift for God and for his people.
Angelus, 7/11/2021
“There came a poor widow”
Raniero Cantalamessa
One day, Jesus was standing before the temple treasury, watching people deposit their offerings. He saw a poor widow come and put in all she had, two copper coins, which make a penny. He turned to his disciples and said, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than the others. All have given from their excess, but she, in her poverty, put in all she had, all she had to live on.”
We might call this Sunday the “Sunday of the widows.” The story of a widow was also told in the first reading, the widow of Zarephath who gave up all she had left to eat (a handful of flour and a drop of oil) to prepare a meal for the prophet Elijah.
This is a good occasion in which to turn our attention toward both the widows and the widowers of today. If the Bible speaks so often of widows and never of widowers it is because in ancient society the woman who was left alone was at a greater disadvantage than the man who was left alone. Today there is no longer this difference. Actually, in general it now seems that women who are alone manage much better than men.
On this occasion I would like to treat a theme that is of definite interest not only to widows and widowers but also to all those who are married, especially during this month in which we remember the dead. Does the death of a husband or wife, which brings about the legal end of a marriage, also bring with it the total end of communion between the two persons? Does something of that bond which so strongly united two persons on earth remain in heaven, or will all be forgotten once we have crossed the threshold into eternal life?
One day, some Sadducees presented Jesus with the unlikely case of a woman who was successively the wife of seven brothers, asking him whose wife she would be after the resurrection. Jesus answered: “When they rise from the dead they will neither marry nor be given in marriage but will be like angels in heaven” (Mark 12:25).
Interpreting this saying of Jesus wrongly, some have claimed that marriage will have no follow-up in heaven. But with his reply Jesus is rejecting the caricature the Sadducees presented of heaven, as if it were going to be a simple continuation of the earthly relationship of the spouses. Jesus does not exclude the possibility that they might rediscover in God the bond that united them on earth.
According to this vision, marriage does not come to a complete end at death but is transfigured, spiritualized, freed from the limits that mark life on earth, as also the ties between parents and children or between friends will not be forgotten. In a preface for the dead the liturgy proclaims: “Life is transformed, not taken away.” Even marriage, which is part of life, will be transfigured, not nullified.
But what about those who have had a negative experience of earthly marriage, an experience of misunderstanding and suffering? Should not this idea that the marital bond will not break at death be for them, rather than a consolation, a reason for fear? No, for in the passage from time to eternity the good remains and evil falls away. The love that united them, perhaps for only a brief time, remains; defects, misunderstandings, suffering that they inflicted on each other, will fall away.
Indeed, this very suffering, accepted with faith, will be transformed into glory. Many spouses will experience true love for each other only when they will be reunited “in God,” and with this love there will be the joy and fullness of the union that they did not know on earth. In God all will be understood, all will be excused, all will be forgiven.
Some will ask of course about those who have been legitimately married to different people, widowers and widows who have remarried. (This was the case presented to Jesus of the seven brothers who successively had the same woman as their wife.) Even for them we must repeat the same thing: That which was truly love and self-surrender between each of the husbands or wives, being objectively a good coming from God, will not be dissolved. In heaven there will not be rivalry in love or jealousy. These things do not belong to true love but to the intrinsic limits of the creature.
How much is the Kingdom of Heaven worth?
Fernando Armellini
Introduction
The Bible frequently exhorts us to give alms: “Give to the hungry some of your food, and to the naked some of your clothing. Whatever you have left over, give away as alms; and do not let your eye begrudge the alms that you give” (Tb 4:16).
If there is a price to pay to enter the kingdom of heaven, what is it? Will it be enough to give something in alms? In one of his famous homilies (Homily in Ev., 5,1-3), Pope Gregory the Great (590-614) addresses this issue and responds: ‘The kingdom of God has no price; it is worth everything one possesses;’ he then illustrates his statement with some examples taken from the Gospel.
In the case of Zacchaeus, entry into the kingdom of heaven was paid for with half of the goods he possessed because the other half was used to pay back the fourfold to those he had defrauded (Lk 19:8). In the case of Peter and Andrew, the kingdom of heaven was worth the nets and the boat because the two brothers had nothing else (Mt 4:20). The widow bought it for much less: only two coins (Lk 21:2). Someone even went in offering only a glass of fresh water (Mt 10:42).
The price to be paid is easy to establish: the kingdom of God is worth everything one possesses, no matter how little or much.
Gospel: Mark 12:38-44
The most serious dangers are well hidden and better disguised, those that take us by surprise and unprepared. If Jesus advises the disciples, in a heartfelt way, to be careful, to be on guard against a certain kind of people, it means that the pitfalls they tend are extremely serious. After a series of disputes with Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians in Jerusalem’s temple, Jesus makes a direct, courageous, and precise attack against the scribes, and to make it more incisive, he uses satire, irony, and a language that appears all too provocative. This reveals how worried he was that a particular nefarious behavior could infiltrate even the community of his disciples.
The scribes were initially the ones in charge of drafting documents of all kinds, but, after the exile in Babylon, they had become the official interpreters of the law of the Lord (Esd 7:11), they constituted the authority in the legislative field, they were the judges in charge of pronouncing sentences in the courts. Their profession was legitimate, yet Jesus had cause to complain about their behavior.
The first accusation he made against them concerning vanity, was ostentation (vv. 38-39). They loved to show off their knowledge and their titles and draw attention to themselves, not to be confused with the people; with the ignorant, they were careful not to dress like others. They wore a uniform; they “loved to walk about in long robes” (v. 38).
It was out of respect for their dress that people treated them with a thousand regards, gave them their way in the streets, reserved first places in the squares and synagogues, and at the marketplace served them better and earlier than others. They could not be greeted with a simple ‘shalom;’ they demanded bows, kisses, and a religious silence every time they opened their mouths, even if only to breathe. When they did not receive these attentions of deference, they were indignant.
The Master considered this a ridiculous comedy and could not stand it; he was allergic to their uniforms. The Latin etymology derives from the verb ‘dividere,’ divide, separate, create caste.
More than a sin, theirs was a disease, a pathology that could have been easily cured. What fed the vanity of the scribes was the naive servility of the people who, by paying them honors and obeisance, were convinced that they were giving glory to God. To bring them back into the ranks and make them taste the joy of feeling like brothers, it would have been enough for all of them to behave like Jesus, who had no particular regard for them. Jesus preferred the friendship of sinners and outcasts to theirs; he did not resort to their recommendations; he did not ask for their support.
In the face of such clear words and behavior of the Master, one wonders how it can happen that in the Church, at times we still do not realize how anti-Gospel is the race for first places, honorary titles, and the search for applause and privileges. The world structured in a pyramidal hierarchy has been definitively condemned by Christ. To restore it is not a venial sin but a frontal attack against evangelical logic.
There is a more serious sin that Jesus imputes to the rabbis: “They devour the houses of widows” (v. 40). Widows, along with orphans and foreigners, were the people God had placed under his protection (Ps 146:9). Woe to them, woe to them, woe to commit injustice against them. The Lord had established: “You shall not oppress or afflict a resident alien. You shall not wrong any widow or orphan. If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me, I will surely listen to their cry” (Ex 22:20-26).
Jesus accuses the scribes of “devouring the widows’ houses.” They probably took advantage of the naivety of these simple and defenseless women to get their alms, or they demanded exorbitant fees to plead their cases in court.
The exploitation of the weakest people is the principle on which our competitive and quarrelsome world is based. From this principle, the clever society is born, which is the opposite of the evangelical community. However, even the poor, when they yearn to occupy the place of those who oppress them, do not dream of a new world; they only aspire to perpetuate the old. They do not want to put an end to the mentality of the ‘scribes,’ but to substitute themselves for the ‘scribes;’ they desire the exchange of parts, while Jesus wants the play that has always been performed in the world to be thrown in the dustbin.
The third accusation is even more severe: “They pretend to make long prayers” (v. 40). They are not only exploiters of the weak, but they play a comedy: they perform impeccable religious practices, they show great piety to convince everyone that the Lord is also on their side. Judging them, contradicting them, not submitting to their will, not giving them the honors, they demand means siding against God.
Sincere and straightforward people cannot stand this hypocritical religion, and at a certain point, they get tired and may even abandon the faith. Who is to blame for these defections?
In contrast to the scribes, the people who dominate society, in the second part of the passage (vv. 41-44), a model of authentic religiosity is introduced: a poor widow.
This is not the first time in Mark’s Gospel that women appear to whom Jesus looks with sympathy and admiration. He had already met the woman who, suffering from bleeding, had approached him to touch the hem of his cloak and had recognized her faith: “Daughter, your faith has saved you” (Mk 5:34); he had even been amazed at the faith of the Syrian Phoenician, who had declared herself satisfied with the crumbs that fell from under the table set for her children. Moved, Jesus exclaimed, “Woman, how great is your faith” (Mt 15:28; Mk 7:24-30).
These first two women were models of faith; models of total generosity were the widow of today’s Gospel and the one who, a few days later, would anoint his head “with an alabaster jar of perfumed oil, costly genuine spikenard” (Mk 14:3). They are four exemplary figures chosen by Mark to show how women, considered by all to be the last, were instead the first (Mk 10:31). They illustrate by their lives what a true disciple must be like.
The first characteristic is highlighted today by the behavior of the widow who, unlike the rabbis who flaunted their religiosity, performs her gesture without calling anyone’s attention, without being noticed.
This woman did not know Jesus, did not listen to his teachings, did not respond to his call, and is not his disciple. She did not follow him, as did the Twelve and many other women who accompanied him during the three years of his public life (Lk 8:1-3). Yet, she behaves in an evangelical way, as Jesus recommended: “When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret” (Mt 6:2-4). This widow is the image of those who, even today, although they have never read a page of the Gospel, docile to the impulses of the Spirit, live in an evangelical way.
The second characteristic of true love is to be total. Love for God must involve the whole person: “You shall love the Lord your God,” Jesus enjoined, “with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mk 12:30), and love for one’s neighbor must be unreserved.
The widow is presented as a model of this love. Unlike the rich who “threw into the treasury many coins,” she does not put much; she throws everything she has, indeed, as the Greek text specifies, “in her poverty, she threw her whole life into it” (v. 44).
The disciple is not the one who puts a part of himself or what he has at stake but sells everything he has to give it to the poor and offers his whole life as the Master did. Like the widow in today’s Gospel, even those who are poor are called to give everything. No one is so poor that he does not have something to offer and no one so rich that he does not need to receive from others. God has filled his children with gifts so that, following the example of the Father in heaven, they may not keep them for themselves but make them available to others.
Through the totality of her love, the widow thus becomes not only the image of the true disciple but also of God and Jesus Christ who, as Paul points out, “he became poor although he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9).
The place of the greatest revelation of God’s face is Calvary. It is there that God has shown his identity. He does not pretend; he offers; he gives all of himself to us. He does not want people to prostrate themselves before him, but he wants them to kneel before their brothers and sisters. He does not ask that they give their lives to him but that, with him, they make them available to their brothers and sisters.
The widow is the image of God and Christ because she stripped herself of everything she owned and made a gift of it to others.
“To give from one’s poverty”: a missionary criterion
Romeo Ballan, mccj
In the jungles of Brazil, a missionary once asked a Yanomami Indio: “Who is good?” To which the Indio replied: “The one who shares is good”. A reply that is in tune with the Gospel of Jesus! The two women, both poor widows, both skilled in the art of surviving, protagonists of the biblical and missionary message, bear witness to today’s Readings.
In an area inhabited by pagans in northern Palestine, the widow of Zarephath (1st. Reading), despite the scarcity of food caused by the drought, is willing to share her bread and water with the prophet Elijah, who is fleeing from the persecution of King Achab and Queen Jezabel. The widow has reached the very end of her resources (v. 12), but trusts in the word of the man of God, and God sees to it that the bare necessities are there for her, her son and other relatives (v. 15-16). Despite the wickedness of the royal couple, God’s protection is exercised for his messenger (Elijah) and for the poor.
The scene is similar in the open area of the Temple in Jerusalem, the official place of cult, where Mark (Gospel) gives us two contrasting scenes. On the one hand, the scribes and those versed in the Law, full of vanity and ostentation (they wear expensive garments, like to be greeted obsequiously in public, sit in the places of honour), and have the presumption to try to manipulate God with lengthy prayers, while they sink so low as to swallow the property of widows (v. 40). On the other side, Jesus calls attention to the shy, secretive gesture of the poor widow who, avoiding all show, throws two small coins into the treasury, “all that she had to live on.” (v. 44). They were two coins of immense worth! She does not give a large amount, like the rich, but she gives all, everything; the Greek text says: ‘her whole life’.
The self-seeking and the free giving are brought face to face. The scribes manifest a religious practice that seeks personal profit: even when they perform good works they are seeking their own interests; they are victims of the culture of ostentation. On the other hand, Jesus extols the spontaneity, humility and detachment of the widow: she trusts in God, and so abandons herself to Him. Once again we come across the radical teaching in Mark’s Gospel that we considered on recent Sundays: the true disciple of Jesus sells everything, distributes the proceeds among the poor, offers his life, as the Master did, for the redemption of everyone (2nd Reading, v. 26), loves God and neighbour with his whole heart. For the widow, this twofold love is more important than her own survival.
For the Kingdom of God, to give much or little is not important; what counts is to give everything. Pope St. Gregory the Great affirmed: “The Kingdom of God is without price; it is worth everything that we possess!” Two small coins are enough, or the giving of a glass of cool water (Mt.10:42). The gift offered out of one’s poverty is an expression of faith, of love and of mission.
This is what the Bishops of the Latin American Churches declared in the Conference of Puebla (Mexico, 1979) when speaking about the commitment to the universal mission: “The hour has come, finally, for Latin America, to… launch itself beyond its own frontiers, ad gentes. It is true that we ourselves need missionaries, but we must give of our own poverty” (Puebla n. 368). The commitment to mission, both within and outside one’s own country, is concrete and demanding: both material and spiritual means are needed, but above all, people who are ready to go, and to offer their lives for the Kingdom of God!
The poor woman of Zarephath and the widow of today’s Gospel suggest anew the challenges of a mission lived through choices of poverty and by using poor means, based on the power of the Word, free from any conditioning authority, being among the least of the earth, in situations of frailty, in weakness, isolation, antagonism… both personal and of the collaborators. Paul, Xavier, Comboni, Teresa of Calcutta and many other missionaries lived their vocation under the banner of the Cross, facing hardships, obstacles and misunderstanding, in the firm belief that “the works of God are born and grow at the foot of Calvary” (Daniel Comboni). The missionary places at the centre of his life the crucified, risen and living Lord, because he believes that the power of Christ and of the Gospel is revealed in the weakness of the apostle and precariousness of human means (cf. Paul). In situations of poverty, abandonment and death, the missionary discovers in the crucified Christ the effective presence of the God of Life and a multitude of brothers and sisters to be loved and valued, bringing them the Gospel, message of life and hope.
