Learning from the Mite-Giving Widow How To Give Ourselves to God, 32nd Sunday (B), November 10, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
November 10, 2024
1 Kings 17:10-16, Ps 146, Heb 9:24-28, Mk 12:38-44

To listen to an audio recording of today’s Gospel, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• On this day on which we at Columbia have had the incredible privilege to walk with Jesus on the Columbia campus, to adore him in St. Paul’s Chapel, and to give witness to the source and the summit of the Catholic life, the root and center of your and my life, Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, it’s fitting that we have the Gospel we do, because we see in it the essence of authentic Catholic spirituality, which is a Eucharistic spirituality.
• In last Sunday’s Gospel, you remember, Jesus told us clearly what the first and greatest commandment is, the most important thing we have to do in life: to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. Love, as we know, is more than merely words and feelings, but is shown in deeds. Love is choosing to act for the good of another, sacrificing oneself for sake of someone or something else.
• In tonight’s Gospel, Jesus gives us a real-life example of someone who lived this way. It’s an opportunity to help us to determine, in our concrete circumstances, whether we are really trying to love God with all we are and have.
• This is one of the most important things we need to ask, at any stage of our life, but particularly when we’re young. The reason is because there’s a great temptation, as St. Therese of the Child Jesus used to say, to try to “love Jesus by halves.” We try to give him 10 percent, or 50 percent, but we don’t love him lavishly. It’s a little like what happens sometimes with Catholics at the offertory when the collection is taken up. We put “something” in, but often it’s not much of a sacrifice. And that can become the approach we take to our whole spiritual life. We give God a “little” of our time. Every once in a while we use the talents he’s given us to step forward and help the Church. But we’re not generous. And what can happen is we begin to become lukewarm in our faith, often using our time, talents and resources for ourselves or for many other things, far less important than God. That’s why today, on this day on which we have brought our Eucharistic faith out to campus, that we go from trying to love the Lord a “little” to seeking to love him with as much generosity as we can muster. The woman in today’s Gospel shows us how to do that.
• Jesus had finished his “formal” teaching in the courtyard of the Temple of Jerusalem and he began, basically, to “people watch,” in order to instruct his apostles about how to put what he was teaching about loving God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength into action. There was a stream of people depositing money in the temple treasury, which was a large tuba-shaped receptacle leading to a secure moneybox. People would put their coins — there were no “bills” in the ancient world — in the horn at the top, which was like a funnel, and then the sound of the coins would resonate as they rolled down the metal tubing into the box. Many rich people, St. Mark tells us, were putting in large sums and “making a lot of noise” on the treasury tuba. Some of these donors were perhaps the scribes against whom Jesus told the crowds to beware at the beginning of the Gospel, those who liked to wear long robes, stand in market places, plop themselves in the VIP seats at banquets and recite lengthy prayers all to be noticed and greeted; but, because of this conspicuously religious behavior, nobody suspected that they were at the same time greedily trying to “devour the houses of widows” and take advantage of other helpless people. In contrast to such hypocritical ostentation, Jesus draws attention to a poor widow who came and put in two lepta, two small coins that together were worth about a penny and were so thin they likely barely made a sound. Jesus gave a surprising lesson that the disciples obviously never forgot. Jesus praised the poor widow rather than all the rest, saying that she had contributed more than all of them, for they, he said, “gave out of their surplus, but she gave everything she had, all she had to live on.” This widow, because of her poverty, could easily have been excused for giving nothing. She could have justly chosen to drop into the tuba only one of the lepta and kept the other for herself. But she didn’t. She gave it all. And her generosity was praised by Jesus and will remain famous until the end of time.
• It’s important to ask: What could have moved her to give to the Temple even what she needed to survive? There’s only one reason: deep faith and love. She believed not simply that God exists, or that he worked various miracles in the past to help her people. She believed so much in him and was so convinced of the importance of what was going on in God’s house that she wanted to dedicate her life and all her goods to continuing and expanding it. She accounted the continuance and expansion of that saving work as worth more than even her own life. Faith leads to that type of trust in God and gratefully generosity.
• It is this faith that links the Gospel to the first reading. There we find another widow, in pagan Zarephath, who during a massive drought and consequent famine was down to her handful of flour and oil. She had doubtless prayed to God asking for help for her and her son, but she was also a Middle Eastern realist who grasped that she had enough only for one last meal before, it seemed, she and her son would starve to death. The prophet Elijah, however, shows up, sent to her house by God. And Elijah asked her to prepare him a cake first, promising that the flour jar and jug of oil would not be exhausted until the end of the drought. She trusted and used all she had left to feed Elijah. Continuing his life and work, she fathomed, was more important than continuing her and her son’s lives. God rewarded her faith and generosity by making the little oil and flour miraculously last for a year. She, her son and Elijah all survived the time of brutal scarcity. The lesson is that we save our lives not by grasping on to what we have, but by sacrificing them out of trust in God and love for others. It is paradoxically only when we die to ourselves so that others may live that we ourselves survive.
• The stronger our faith, the more we are willing to trust in God and the more we are willing to sacrifice. The more we love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, the more we will give of ourselves and what we have to the advance of his work. The first apostles, moved by faith in Christ, left fishing businesses and lucrative tax collection seats in order to follow Christ, even though it meant that they, like him, would have no bread, no money, no bags, no change of clothes, and no place to lay their head (Lk 9:3; 9:58). The early Christians, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, used to sell their property and lay the proceeds at the feet of the apostles in order to advance the proclamation of the Gospel (Acts 4:34-35). The building of so many parishes in the United States, like several of those where I was assigned in Massachusetts, followed this same pattern of faith and generosity: poor immigrants offered to God not only sizeable portions of their paltry paychecks, but also their considerable elbow grease, coming before and after work to assist the hired masons, engineers and architects in order to save the parish money so that more of what they raised could be spent constructing to God’s glory a more beautiful Church. Unlike many of the sacred edifices in Europe that were built by wealthy merchants and landed nobles, the Church in the United States was not built by “rich people” putting in “large sums,” but by poor immigrants putting in their respective lepta, forsaking savings and going without vacations in order together to build something worthier of God, something that expressed their faith, something that made concrete that they loved him more than they loved even themselves.
• And so, today, it’s key for us to examine how much generosity flows from our faith, how we use the time, the personal gifts and abilities and the material resources of which he has made us stewards. Like with the widow in the Gospel, Jesus wants to be able to praise each and all of us for our generosity. This is not just an economic issue, on the basis of which parishes, schools, food pantries, and other Catholic institutions and programs will be maintained, survive and thrive, but far more importantly, a moral issue, since, as economists tell us, how we spend our money is a sign of what we value. The great Presbyterian Biblical commentator William Barclay said about this Gospel scene, “Real generosity gives until it hurts. For many of us, it is a real question if our giving to God’s work is any sacrifice at all. Few people will do without their pleasures to give a little more to the work of God. It may well be a sign of the decadence of the Church and the failure of our Christianity that gifts have to be coaxed out of church people, and that often they will not give at all unless they get something back in the way of entertainment or of goods. There can be few of us who read this story [of the poor widow] without shame.” He’s referring to the fact that in many Churches they need to do dinners, raffles, and all different types of fundraising activities to try to get what’s needed from parishioners to pay the bills, build a parish school, renovate the restrooms, and so on. Many Catholics pay far more on cable or streaming services than they give to the work of the Church. Others contribute far less than the equivalent of one cup of Starbucks coffee, not to mention a lunch or dinner out. Those choices can reveal what people really value most. Today’s Gospel teaches us that it’s not so much the size of the contribution that matters, but the sacrifice that the gift entails.
• The reason is, as Jesus tells us elsewhere in the Gospel, because “the measure with which we measure will be measured back to us” (Lk 6:38). In other words, as St. Paul quipped, if we give generously, we will receive generously; if we give sparingly, we will receive sparingly (see 2 Cor 9:6). This is not because God withholds his graces from the stingy, but because the human heart is a two-way street. If a person’s heart is open and generous, then it is capable of receiving from God the blessings God wishes to give; if it is tight and miserly, on the other hand, then very little of God’s grace will be able to penetrate it. We cannot serve both God and mammon and if we are even partially trying to serve mammon, that part of us will atrophy in its receptivity to God. We see this encapsulated in the episode of the Rich Young Man in the Gospel, which we heard a month ago (see Mt 19:16-30; Mk 10:17-31). He came to Christ and asked him the most important question anyone can ask, how to inherit eternal life. The Lord told him to keep the commandments and then listed them. But the Rich Young Man replied that he had kept all of these since he youth, yet realized that he was still missing something necessary for happiness. The Lord looked on him with love and said that if he wished to be perfectly happy, he should go, sell all that he has, give the proceeds to the poor, and then come follow him. At that the rich young man’s face fell to the ground and he walked away sad. Faced with a choice between Jesus and his money, between true happiness and transient wealth, the Rich Young Man chose his money, and went away sad because money can never buy happiness. In the same way, if anyone wishes to receive the fullness of the graces Christ wants to give us in this life and in the next, then he, unlike the Rich Young Man, needs to detach himself from his possessions, from his money, and devote them, as a good steward, to the sake of the kingdom. We see this in the lives of so many young people who enter the priesthood and religious and consecrated life working for very little pay or none at all because they are working ultimately for God. We see it in lay, religious and priestly missionaries who forsake the comforts of life in the United States in order to travel to remote and totally undeveloped parts of the world to share the Gospel. We see it in FOCUS missionaries on university campuses, who dedicate two or more years of their lives, raising their own funds, in order to share the faith with students on campus. We see it in many Catholics individuals and families who, despite all of their bills, sacrifice their time, gifts and material blessings to build up the kingdom of the One who gave them everything, to strengthen his church, and to care for the poor. On the other hand, if we like the Rich Young Man continue to want to hold on to our money and stuff, if we want jealously to guard our time and the talents with which God has blessed us, then it is likely we will walk away from Jesus sad, too, for it is only in giving that we receive.
• I’d like to apply the teaching of today’s Gospel to the question of how you’re going to respond to the invitation we’ve been extending since the beginning of November for you to step forward as an officer of Columbia Catholic Ministry, in order to strengthen Catholic life on campus and together with other students evangelize our campus and bring as many of our fellow students as we can to share our faith in our Eucharistic Lord. There are some students whose faith leads them always to want to step forward out of love for God and their neighbor. There are others who seem never to get involved, even when there’s a service opportunity. And yet they regularly can sacrifice huge amounts of time for sports, for clubs and for various other extra-curriculars, and use those commitments as excuses as to why they can’t do more, or much at all, to strengthen Catholic life. They can seem to behave as if they believe that all God is asking of them is to show up to Sunday Mass. But he’s asking of us so much more. He’s asking us to love him with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. He’s asking us to sacrifice for him and for others, giving him back and giving them what he’s so generously giving us. The question is always whether we’ll think such invitations are meant for others or whether we’ll receive them as an invitation directly from the Lord and respond accordingly. Someone once put without permission on a chapel bulletin board at a place I was once assigned on Cape Cod something that speaks to whether we’ll step forward or not. It was as creative as any of the famous sketches Abbot and Costello. It read: “Once upon a time, there were four people named Everybody, Somebody, Nobody and Anybody. When there was an important job, Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did. Everybody got angry because it was Somebody’s job. Everybody thought Somebody would do it, but Nobody realized that nobody would do it. So it ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done in the first place.” Sometimes even campus chaplaincies can be full of “Everybodies” who are sure that “Somebody” will do it. What’s needed for the Church to thrive, what’s needed for Catholic life at Columbia to grow, is for “Anybody” and “Somebody,” and indeed “Everybody,” to step forward. Please recognize that the offertory tuba is ready not to have us put coins into it, but ultimately ourselves, in a way that Jesus hopes to praise.
• In this illustration of the importance of generosity, Jesus, like in all his lessons, did not say, merely, “Do what I say,” but always, “Follow me!” Today’s encounter with the poor widow is sandwiched between last week’s instruction on loving God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, and next week’s prophecy about the last days. Immediately after those prophetic words, St. Mark moves to the Passover, the Last Supper, and Jesus’ crucifixion and death. In other words, Jesus’ teaching about generosity is enveloped between Christ’s teaching about total self-giving love and his own putting those words into practice on Calvary. That’s what the Letter to the Hebrews mentions in today’s second reading, when it describes how Jesus our high priest offered himself to take away the sins of many, appearing before God on our behalf. Jesus, in calling us to give not just what is extra but what is essential, not just what is “left over” but what is right, is simply telling us to love as he has loved us, all the way, holding nothing back. He gave his life in exchange for ours, valuing us more than he valued himself. On this day of our Eucharistic procession, as we continue the Eucharistic Revival of the Church in the United States, we recognize that the Revival is meant not merely to increase Eucharistic knowledge, faith, amazement, gratitude and love. It’s meant to spur a truly Eucharistic life, someone who imitates Jesus’ total self-giving received in the Eucharist, and gives as generously as the widow in the Gospel. As Jesus comes now to strengthen us to “do this in memory” of him, to imitate him in giving our body and blood, our heart, life and love for God and for others, we ask him to send the Holy Spirit to help make us love him lavishly with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and everything we are and have. If we do so, then, by God’s mercy, we — and many others we might be able to help encounter him, here on campus and beyond, through our generosity for the kingdom — will be praised by Him before his Father like he lauded the widow in the Gospel. This is ultimately why we’re alive at this time. This is why we’re here at Columbia now. In response to Jesus’ total self-giving love for us, let’s not try to love him by halves, let’s not try to ration our generosity, but with faith and love, let’s give all!

The readings for today’s Mass were:

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