A Reflection for Monday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
A few Sundays back, on Nov. 10, the 32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, the Lectionary gave us Mark’s version of the widow’s offering. I was preaching that Sunday, and the key I found to that homily was in the collect (the opening prayer), which was:
Almighty and merciful God,
graciously keep from us all adversity,
so that, unhindered in mind and body alike,
we may pursue in freedom of heart
the things that are yours.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
What does it mean to “pursue in freedom of heart the things that are [God’s]”?
That question unlocked this Gospel passage for me. It’s all too easy, given this story, to sentimentalize the widow’s poverty or to valorize her generosity as a heroic ideal to be emulated at all costs, a kind of “give till it hurts” message. If your imagination, confronted with this story, serves up a picture of a comfortable priest cajoling a struggling elderly woman to put another few dollars into the collection plate—well, that’s exactly what does not sit well with me here.
And from the standpoint of justice, we might well want to say: Shouldn’t the widow keep her two small coins, “her whole livelihood”? Shouldn’t she be given something from the treasury, rather than putting something in?
Indeed, some commentators point out that immediately before this passage, Jesus is critiquing scribes as “devouring the houses of widows” (Lk 20:47) and conclude that Jesus’ observation of the widow’s gift is a critique of the Temple treasury and those who accept the gift, rather than praise of the widow’s generosity. They note that Jesus never says “Go and do likewise” in reference to the widow’s contribution.
While that reading certainly makes sense, it also seems to minimize, if not erase, Jesus’ clear recognition of the widow’s offering and to remove her agency in making the contribution at all. But what the collect prompted me to realize is that what the widow has—and what the wealthy people lack, caught up in their riches and contributing from their surplus—is the freedom of heart to pursue what is God’s.
Whether or not the Temple treasury should have expected or accepted an offering from the widow is, from that perspective, beside the point. The widow gives wholeheartedly and it is her freedom, as much or more than her generosity, that we are called to emulate.
In this reading, what Jesus is calling us to is attention. He notices the widow’s offering while the wealthy are ignoring it. And in noticing it, he invites us to change our own measure of value, recognizing these two small coins as “more than all the rest.”
Where are we called to notice offerings—and those who make them in the freedom of heart that pursues what is God’s—that we might otherwise dismiss as small? How might we begin to recognize them as “more than all the rest”?
