32nd Sunday in ordinary time, Cycle B. Today’s readings: 1 Kings 17:10-16; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44 (shorter version Mark 12:41-44)
Blessed Chiara Badano (1971-1990) was an Italian teenager who passed away just weeks before her 19th birthday after a courageous battle with osteogenic sarcoma, a painful form of bone cancer. Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare Movement, had affectionately nicknamed her Luce (meaning ‘light’), a fitting name for the faith and peace she radiated during her two-year via crucis. Near the end, she expressed her enduring spirit with these words: “At this point, I have nothing left. But I still have my heart, and with that I can always love.”
It is a sentiment that resonates powerfully in today’s scriptural readings, because in two of today’s readings we encounter the figure of a widow performing an act of extraordinary generosity. In the first reading, the beneficiary of this kindness is the prophet Elijah. Arriving in the town of Zarephath during a time of acute famine, he encounters a poor widow and asks her for some food.
Her utter poverty and her resignation are evident in her words: “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.”
Undaunted, the prophet repeats his request, promising that if she bakes a little loaf for him, the Lord will provide for her and her son. The woman – who is not even a Hebrew – complies, despite not having any guarantees that Elijah’s words would come true.
Authentic love and generosity are not measured by quantity but by the willingness to share what is essential to us
Likewise, the star of today’s gospel account is another widow. We are told that Jesus was in the temple, observing people as they put their offerings in the treasury. Noting that wealthy people put in notable sums, whereas a poor widow put in a few cents’ worth of coins, Jesus remarks to his disciples that she gave more than all the other contributors. His reasoning is that whereas the rich contributed from their surplus wealth, she “from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood”.
In both cases, therefore, the hero of the story is a woman who exhibits a generosity that appears almost reckless, especially when we bear in mind the poverty of her means and the precariousness of her social standing. In biblical terms, in fact, the category of ‘widows and orphans’ is practically a byword for the destitute. They were the defenceless ones who had no protector in this world except God.
Despite their deprivation, both widows embody the kind of love that Jesus expounded in the injunction from last Sunday’s gospel: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. … You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
These women give not from their surplus or what they could easily spare but from the very core of their livelihood. In doing so, they remind us that authentic love and generosity are not measured by quantity but by the willingness to share what is essential to us. Their example calls us to a love that is sacrificial, a service that costs us something real, and a faith that trusts God to provide, even when we give away what little we have left.
Countless people over the centuries have lived this truth, knowing that God is not surpassed in his generosity. In the beautiful words of St Mother Teresa of Calcutta: “I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no more hurt, only more love.”
bgatt@maltachurchtribunals.org