10 November 2024 - 32nd Sunday · "B"
1K 17, 10-16; Heb. 9, 24-28; Mk 12, 38-44
HOMILY
Dear brothers and sisters,
Each year we commemorate in our liturgical celebrations the cycle of the main events in the life of the Savior Jesus and we read his teaching in the Gospel, following a cycle of 52 Sundays called the liturgical year, which begins on the first Sunday of Advent. We are therefore very close to the end of this cycle, and the readings on the last Sundays of the year will tell us about the end of time. One of the characteristics of these end times, according to the Gospel, will be the reversal of situations: those who have been underprivileged and oppressed in this life will be in joy, and the privileged of this world who have lived without compassion for the less fortunate will be in pain. This is the context in which this morning's Gospel should be understood.
There is a contrast between rich and poor: the rich represented by the scribes, and the poor represented by the widow who deposits her tiny silver coin in the Temple treasury.
Wealthy tourists who travel to underprivileged countries often have the opportunity to give change to the poor, especially the poor children who run after them. This is certainly a commendable gesture. At the same time, there is something shocking about this situation. The widow in the Gospel, on the other hand -- like the widow in the first reading, who feeds the prophet Elijah -- are poor people who give to the poor. They give from what is essential, not from what is superfluous.
And this teaches us something very beautiful about God. If God were a rich man giving out of his abundance, he would be better represented by the scribes in the Gospel than by the widow depositing her obolus. But can we not say that God gives us not out of his riches, but out of his poverty? Yes, because God revealed himself in Jesus Christ, who became poor with us and for us. In Jesus of Nazareth, God did not appear to us as a rich tourist throwing coins at poor children, but as a poor man sharing his life with us.
If the Gospel were simply a condemnation of the rich, we might feel fine, since most of us can consider ourselves, if not poor, at least not precisely rich. And so we might think that the Gospel's harsh (or at least demanding) words about the rich are not for us. But that's not the real message of the Gospel: Jesus' message is that he expects us to give not so much of what we have (little or a lot) but of what we are, of our own lives; that we live in service to those around us or in our path.
And I believe that this helps us to understand the meaning of ministries in the Church of God. Those who are ordained priests or to other ministries are not given some kind of bank of spiritual riches to distribute like rich tourists to poor children, but to give themselves, in their personal poverty as well as in their richness, so that the gifts that God has placed in each and every one of us can manifest themselves and grow.
One of the marvelous aspects of any spiritual ministry is the possibility of often being able to pass on what we do not possess. A passage from Bernanos' “Diary of a Country Priest” has always struck me: this young country priest has to help a great lady, a countess, who was in terrible distress and anguish. He himself, at that moment in his life, was going through an enormous inner crisis that no one knew about. Through his ministry, he restored serenity to the woman, who died in great peace. He later wrote in his diary: ‘’Be at peace,' I told her. And she received this peace on her knees... It was I who gave it to her. How marvelous that we should be able to make such a gift of what we don't have ourselves, how sweet the miracle of our empty hands!
Obviously, all this is even better expressed in the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews that we read earlier. Jesus did not enter the sanctuary with material sacrifices, but with his own blood. This means that he did not give us ‘things’; he gave himself to us. He gave us his being, his life. He gave himself to us as the food of life.
Let's ask him to discover how, from the depths of our poverty, we can help others discover their riches by sharing with them -- even what we don't have.
Armand Veilleux