32nd. Sunday (Year B)
(1 Kings
17:10-16; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44)
The Temple in Jerusalem and the synagogues spread
throughout the country were two very distinct aspects of the worship of God in
Israel. The ‘latest version’, so to
speak, of the Temple was -- in Our Lord’s time -- the magnificent,
world-famous, Herodian Temple in Jerusalem, built by Herod -- a non-Jewish
Procurator of Judea -- to curry favour with his Jewish subjects. As a building, it was Herod’s pride and joy,
meriting him the appellation ‘the Great’: it was indeed both the glory of
Israel and the envy of nations world-wide.
But it won no favour for Herod with his Jewish, Law-observing subjects,
despite the fact that they used its splendour as the national centre for
official Jewish, centuries-old, sacrificial worship carried out in accordance
with the Law given by God to Moses. The
synagogue, on the other hand, was a more recent institution: a humble, local
centre in Jewish towns and villages everywhere, a religious centre for devout, non-sacrificial,
worship of Israel’s God, serving the exigencies of the Law -- especially the
Ten Commandments -- given by God, through
Moses, as a covenant with Israel, a covenant to be known, understood and loved,
by the people thanks to the Scribes knowledge and understanding of the Torah
itself, the inspirations of God-sent prophets, and the witness of Israel’s
history of blessings, unfaithfulness, suffering, penance and renewal. The synagogue was, moreover, a house of mutual
comfort and strength in local communities throughout the country and wherever
Jews had been sent or congregated together.
Priests served in the prestigious Temple in
Jerusalem where, every year, hundreds of thousands would come from abroad to
worship at the great festivals: worship centred on the glorification of the God
of Israel and the offering of satisfaction -- according to the Law -- for
Israel’s national sin and for the sins of individuals. Scribes were scholars, more to be associated with the quiet synagogue assemblies where worship was directed expressly
to the spiritual advancement of the Jewish people in their understanding of,
and obedience to, God’s will and purpose for His Chosen People, as expressed in
the Torah or Law.
Robes were both acceptable and required for priests; they
were something of an affectation for Scribes:
Beware of the scribes, who like
to go around in long robes and accept greetings in the marketplaces, seats of
honour in the synagogues, and places of honour at banquets.
The Priests were dressed as God’s servants and ministers
for public ceremony and religious splendour.
The Scribes, however, outside the capital Jerusalem, were local teachers,
helping the ordinary people in their understanding of the Law and the virtue
needed to obey it. Affectations in
Scribes – like wearing those long robes mentioned in our Gospel reading -- easily
developed into ostentation, and, since personal expenditure was needed to
sustain it, it does not surprise us to learn that the Scribes were keen on
money.; however, the criminality deserving of Jesus’ promised ‘severe
condemnation’, only came when such love of money led them so far astray as to
take advantage of the most vulnerable in society:
They devour the houses of widows.
From then on, their religion became nothing more than an
empty shell:
Reciting lengthy prayers as a
(mere) pretext.
The Temple Priests, the Scribes and their close associates the
Pharisees, were all worshippers of the one true God of Israel in their diverse
ways, and so too -- but in a non-religious way -- were numerous wealthy
Israelites (remember the rich young man who came to Jesus?) who, believing
their riches were a special gift/reward from God put, as today’s Gospel reading
tells us, generous donations into the Temple treasury. It was these latter worshippers whom Jesus, in order to
teach His disciples what He considered to be most important, compared with the
unknown widow, who also ‘donation-worshipped’ God but in a truly sublime way: without
any ostentation, and without any reservations either, putting her whole living
in the collection box of the Temple:
Jesus sat down opposite the
treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow also came and put in two mites,
which make a quadrans. Calling His
disciples to Himself He said to them, "Amen, I say to you, this poor widow
put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their
surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her
whole livelihood."
She required no respectful greeting, she sought no special honours. Unnoticed and unappreciated, probably quite
unknown, she treasured what the wealthy donors only appreciated, and what the Scribes
were at times tempted to abuse, God’s goodness and majesty; and the money those
treasured to their own ruin, she -- totally forgetful of herself -- converted
into divine currency: unfeigned charity, to her own great reward.
Jesus pointed her out as a model for admiration and
imitation to His disciples, and through His Church He still puts her example
before us, His present-day disciples, and that deserves our most careful notice
and deep consideration as Christians and Catholics.
Modern critics of religious attitudes and others proud to
think of themselves as radicals, faced with those two semi-parabolic stories
from the Gospel would most likely conclude, first of all, that religious
persons, as such, should not be given official marks of respect, places of
honour, because their prayer – public and private – is probably hypocritical
and certainly deluded; while from the second story they will not dream of
celebrating the woman’s self-forgetfulness and total dedication to God but
rather condemn her for thus jettisoning her life-resources.
Let me, therefore, recall to your mind the first reading in
which the Lord performed a great miracle for Elijah and a starving woman of
Zarephath:
“Do not be afraid,” Elijah said
to her. “Go and do as you propose. But
first make me a little cake and bring it to me. Then you can prepare
something for yourself and your son.”
Here is another story concerning Elijah, the great prophet
who appeared to Our Lord together with Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration:
The king sent to (Elijah) a
captain of fifty with his fifty men. So, he went up to Elijah sitting on the
top of a hill. And he spoke to him: "Man of God, the king has said, 'Come
down!'" So, Elijah answered and
said to the captain of fifty, "If I am a man of God, then let fire come
down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men." And fire came down
from heaven and consumed him and his fifty.
(And exactly the same happened a
second time.)
Again, he sent a third captain of
fifty with his fifty men. And the third captain of fifty went up, and came and
fell on his knees before Elijah, and pleaded with him, and said to him:
"Man of God, please let my life and the life of these fifty servants of
yours be precious in your sight. Look,
fire has come down from heaven and burned up the first two captains of fifties
with their fifties. But let my life now be precious in your sight." And the angel of the LORD said to Elijah,
"Go down with him; do not be afraid of him." So, he arose and went
down with him to the king. (2 Kings 1:9ss.)
The king was showing total disregard and disrespect for the
God of Israel and disdain for His prophet, who was to be dragged like some
malefactor into the king’s presence. The
Lord, however, wanted Elijah to be shown respect and you have heard the result. The Scribe liked, and in his way demanded,
respect; Elijah expected and accepted it.
Why was one so very right and the other totally wrong?
The Scribe was wrong in his attitude because he sought and
delighted in respectful greetings for his own person! Elijah wanted respect as the Lord’s prophet
not for his own person: “I am the prophet of the Lord, the God of Israel, Who
has chosen me. Have respect for the
Lord’s prophet. But as for myself, I am no better than my
fathers.”
Elijah had the personal courage and reverential love for
God to demand respect as a prophet of the Lord God of Israel in the face of
royal autocracy; and when an unknown, God-guided widow, had the humility and
devotion to freely accord him great respect, he was able to save her and the
whole of Israel in time of drought and famine:
She said, "As the LORD your
God lives, I have nothing baked; there is only a handful of flour in my jar,
and a little oil in my jug. Just now I was
collecting a couple of sticks, to go in and prepare something for myself and my
son; when we have eaten it, we shall die."
Elijah said to her, "Do not be afraid. Go and do as you propose. But first make me a little cake and bring it
to me. Then you can prepare something
for yourself and your son. For the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'The jar of
flour shall not go empty, nor the jug of oil run dry, until the day when the
LORD sends rain upon the earth.'" She
left and did as Elijah had said. She was able to eat for a year, and he and her
son as well. The jar of flour did not go empty, nor the jug
of oil run dry, as the Lord had foretold through Elijah.
How long might that famine have continued in Israel had
that destitute widow not shown such respect for God’s servant?
The two women in today’s readings were prodigal with
themselves in their respect and reverence for God; for the widow of Zarephath,
God, through Elijah, most wonderfully rewarded such respect and reverence; as for
the ‘poor widow’ in the Temple, we have heard how Jesus appreciated her gift,
and we have undoubting faith that God, the Father of Jesus, with like
appreciation, rewarded and glorified her beyond measure.
Now let me quote
words of Jesus uttered before our Gospel story:
Whoever wishes to come after Me
must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose
it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and that of the Gospel will save it. (Mark 8: 3-35)
There Jesus expresses in general terms, for all His future
disciples, what He had admiringly allowed one particularly chosen and uniquely endowed
woman to exemplify. Our trouble today is
that some disciples are in danger of seeking to rob the Faith of any mystery,
or any demands, above ordinary understanding; to apologize for whatever cannot
be immediately and easily explained.
God’s words, however, are words of divine wisdom and sublime truth, expressing
heavenly, eternal, love, and we should not try to turn them into milk,
saccharine, and water, with pseudo, popularity-seeking, ‘explanations’. We must never forget Jesus’ further words:
Whoever is ashamed of Me and of
My words in this faithless and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be
ashamed of when He comes in His Father’s glory with the holy angels.
We have been given but one prayer of Jesus and in it He
emphasizes, from the very beginning, what is the essential aspect of prayer
for Him as a model for our prayer, and it begins:
Our Father Who art in
heaven, HALLOWED BE THY NAME!
This is a most important lesson for us when many have
lost respect for anything said to be holy.
Today, for example, some young people have no respect for the elderly,
but idolise pop stars who are regularly doped and/or drunk. Others will wholeheartedly cheer footballers
who are paid many millions, but they jeer -- as fat cats -- business leaders
who earn much less though providing work for many needy people. Likewise, in family life today, parents are too
frequently judged merely on the basis of their personal character, while
children are over-indulged as children.
As a result, many young people judge their parents and show them little
or no respect, while childhood is reckoned to excuse selfish, wild, and
destructive behaviour. That is quite
wrong. A mother or father is due respect
from their children because of their parenthood even though, as persons, they
may not be as good as they should be.
Obedience due to parents comes to an end with adulthood; respect for
parents should never come to an end because they were instruments of God in the
birth of their children, and as such, are holy.
Likewise, Mother Church, the holy Scriptures, priests and religious, the
sacred vessels and the church building, all deserve respect in varying degrees,
because they belong to God, they do God’s work or serve God’s purposes.
God’s love is ever warm to succour, His power is ever ready
to save. Today, we must remember,
however, that there can be no justice among nations, no equity in society, no
peace in our homes or in our hearts, when respect for God is ignored; when His
institutions – e.g. marriage and the family – for human development and
fulfilment, harmony in personal relations, and for order and balance in the natural world, are all sacrificed
on the altar of self-exaltation and worldly advantage, where personal,
acceptable, pleasure, and spiritual ignorance, are the accepted criteria for popular
living.
Nevertheless, despite all temporal trials, disappointments
and setbacks, our Catholic aspirations and expectations, our Christian prayers,
will not wilt with time, nor will they prove futile and false for, as our
reading from the letter to the Hebrews assures us:
It is appointed that Christ,
offered once to take away the sins of many, will appear a second tome, not to
take away sin but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await Him.
(Adapted
2021)
