32nd Sunday of the Year
If we are to love our neighbours, before doing anything else we must see our neighbours.
With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists,
we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces.
Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.
Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark
Today’s Responsorial Psalm (145) provides a way to interpret today’s readings, and the Bible. It tells that God has special place in his heart for the poor and secures justice for them: food to the hungry; freedom to prisoners; sight to the blind; protection for the stranger (immigrants and refugees); and care for the motherless child.
Widows feature in today’s readings as images of poverty and powerlessness and though having been exploited by Israel’s religious institutions exhibit resilience and healing. In the first reading and the gospel, we have stories about widows and extreme poverty, but not their names, ages or the circumstances that led to the present. We do know that each is burdened by great poverty. They are the faceless marginalised and dispossessed, the vulnerable and abandoned. This is often how we treat the vulnerable ‘other’. Without details about them, it could appear that they are unimportant and not as valuable to God as we are. Consider the different ways the media talks about Palestinian women today in relation to Israeli women!! Palestinian children and Israeli children!! The extremes of poverty, oppression, violence, inequality all bear a female face as victims, healers, and reconcilers. Common interpretations of the familiar story of the ‘widow’s mite’ fall short when the widow’s religious piety and her willingness to give everything is praised, and how we, as Jesus’ followers, must go and do likewise. The widow is elevated for giving more than wealthy donors. A more important consideration that is needed is focusing on Jesus’ critique of social institutions, and how difficult it can be to be on the same page as Jesus.
Though lauded for her generosity, the gospel is concerned with poverty and oppression. It summarises Jesus’ attitude to clerical corruption. His concern was their heartless exploitation and ostentatious displays of personal piety and moral uprightness. Somehow, they allowed their titles, honour, ego, or our reputation prevent them from being present to others? This is still the case. We could ask what needs to happen for us to be more attentive to the ‘widows’ – the vulnerable - of our world? Is it their generosity or their social oppression?
In the first reading, we see Elijah, like the scribes in the gospel use his 'clerical’ power to get what they want. A woman and child trying to survive a famine are told to provide for Elijah out of their remaining resources. It sounds audacious that having just heard that this woman and her son are about to starve to death, Elijah asks her not only to share the last of her food with him, but to serve him first – she and her son can have the ‘leftovers’ being assured that there would be enough. She is told to trust in God!!! We must read today’s gospel story in isolation of Jesus’ earlier condemnation of the scribes in the temple and the social inequity and imbalance in the religious, political, and social structures of his day: ‘Beware of the scribes, who like to go around in long robes and accept greetings in the marketplaces, seats of honour in synagogues, and places of honour at banquets. They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext recite lengthy prayers.’
Despite her generosity, Jesus would not expect poor and vulnerable people to give away their very last resources and deprive them ‘of their whole livelihood’. Would he really approve her action? Should her generosity be praised or for lamented? Should we not lament any system that manipulates people to part with few their possessions. Should this widow be seen as a model of generosity, or as a victim of exploitation.
At a conference in October 2021, with many people facing exclusion and inequality around the world, Pope Francis drew attention to three pillars of Catholic social teaching represented by solidarity, cooperation, and responsibility that put the human person at the centre of ‘the social, economic and political order.’ The point was that we cannot ‘remain indifferent’ to economic systems that ‘discard people's lives in the name of the god of money, fostering greed and destructive attitudes toward the resources of the earth and fueling various forms of injustice.’ People are still poor; people still seek asylum and safety; women are still marginalised in the church and society; gay and lesbian people still ‘othered’, feared and vilified. Jesus notices! We are called to notice. And the gospel still teaches that what we do for the least of our sisters and brothers, we do for Jesus. Pope Francis reminds us to keep our eyes on the poor and not isolate ourselves from the those overlooked by society. Jesus draws attention to her precisely to remind his disciples that the reign of God operates on an alternative scale of values — one that demands the inexplicably courageous faith and solidarity.
Jesus’ desire is that people would have life more abundantly—’to the full’ (Jn 10:10) in a human community where everyone thrives. It has nothing to do with the prosperity gospel. It is an imaginative vision of a world where every person is connected to and committed to others, where every person’s needs are met, and no becomes wealthy by exploiting another. No matter how glorious exploitative systems of luxury may look on the outside, they are not sustainable.
The widows of today's liturgy invite us to ask ourselves how we can allow our experience to lead us into solidarity. Rich or poor, we are all vulnerable, even if we are not courageous enough to admit it to ourselves. In the long run, our pretensions make us far more fragile than our weakness or poverty. When we accept our own neediness, we can discover the generous love that makes others' needs our own. With that, we will be part of creating that atmosphere of solidarity known as the reign of God. The psalm today reminds and inspires us: ‘(He) upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. (The Lord) sets prisoners free, (the Lord) gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous.’ We need to be attentive to the voices of those on the peripheries whose past meekness and silence has been taken as a sign of sincerity and generosity. We must always be on our guard against those who exercise religious authority like scribes ‘who swallow the property of widows, while making a show of lengthy prayers.
The readings present us with opposite meanings. So, is this generous old woman to be admired though we do not know her reasons? Should we join Jesus in condemning those who “devour the houses of widows”? The woman’s generosity is praiseworthy, but she was also being exploited by a system making contributions obligatory despite having so little to live on. In both widows we see generosity and social oppression. Even if the sacrifice seems unjust, God honours that sacrifice as the act of love it is. Both are true. Ultimately, God is on the side of the oppressed.