Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

“… she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.” (Mk. 12:44)

Jesus had very unorthodox, even radical, ideas about economics!

Open the Gospels, and there we find just a few of Jesus’ revolutionary pronouncements.

For example:
He challenged people to share their food and clothing with those in need.
He advised people to lend without expecting to get anything back.
He encouraged each of us to forgive debts.

He urged us to:
Give to those in need.
Donate to the poor and expect nothing in return.
Donate, not out of a sense of obligation, but motivated by the love of God.
Feed people who are hungry.
Stop storing up “treasures on earth”.
Be considerate and provide for a neighbor who is without the means to care for themselves.  

And, perhaps the most radical of all Jesus’ economic statements was the story of the rich man who claimed to have kept all the commandments since he was a boy, only to have Jesus say to him:

“Sell everything you have and give it to the poor.”

The list could go on and on.

In all four Gospels, Jesus challenged the wealthy to cancel the debts that so burdened the people and left them impoverished.

The Gospel of Luke goes a step further and presents Jesus preaching a very stark message:
“Blessed are the poor.
Woe to the rich.
Blessed are you who hunger now.
Woe to you who are well fed now.” (Lk. 4:20-25)  

As you can see, Jesus uses very strong words to deal with the enormous division that exists between the rich and the poor of this world.

Like so many people to this day, the poor are destined to become the victims of what will bring them relief – which too often is immersion in the temporary painkillers of drugs and hideous forms of trauma.

To be sure, we are not living in the times of Jesus when the power of the Roman Empire determined the quality of life for all those who would not bend to their near infinite control.

We live, as we love to say, “in the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
And yet, researchers from the University of Chicago and Notre Dame report that “poverty has grown by six million people in the United States in the past three months.” Underscoring these concerns, “about 886,000 people filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week, an increase of nearly 77,000 from the previous week.”
The impoverished widow featured in today’s Gospel was reckless in giving all that she had to live on. Her willingness to do this expresses her deep desire to place her full trust in God.

That is what each of us is called to live out – that same willingness to trust, that same desire to reach out to the “least of these,” that same eagerness to follow the example of this impoverished woman.

As followers of Jesus, we are continually called to work for the Church’s all-out conversion to the Gospel.

In the words of Fr. Jose Pagola’s renowned work, Jesus: An Historical Approximation, we are called to imitate the widow in today’s gospel reading by “becoming a friend of sinners … becoming a Church that seeks the lost … becoming a Church where women play the role that Jesus gave them in the gospels … becoming a Church that welcomes, listens to, and walks with those who suffer … becoming a Church that is converted to Jesus … becoming a Church that cries out with a loud voice of indignation and protest against the injustice, torture, and abuse of the poor and the neglected … becoming a Church that suffers with those who suffer, and dies with those who die unjustly.”

Becoming a church, in other words, that uses as its model the near destitute woman featured in today’s Gospel reading – the woman who Jesus proudly pointed to and described as the

“poor widow … who, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.”

Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.