June 5, 2010
Memorial of Saint Boniface, bishop and Martyr
...[P]roclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching. For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth and will be diverted to myths. But you, be self-possessed in all circumstances; put up with hardship; perform the work of an evangelist; fulfill your ministry. 2 Timothy 4:2-5
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.” Mark 12:43-44
Piety
“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest wall of oppression and resistance.” (Robert F. Kennedy, South Africa, 1966)
Study
Who does not like to take the easy way out or the path of least resistance? Who would not prefer “flight” instead of “fight?” Instead of doing what is hard, we want to do what is easy. Paul’s letters to Timothy recognizes these natural human tendencies to want to stay in our comfort zones. He offers encouragement to put up with hardship and fulfill our mission.
Jesus is sitting in the midst of some folks who did take the easy way out. The scribes liked to preach sacrifice to others but relished in the creature comforts that their roles and robes afforded to them. Then along came one poor widow and her two small coins. She could have held onto those coins to buy bread or milk. But she deposited them into the treasury at the temple instead.
Maybe the people listening to Jesus that day were moved to fulfill their mission whether it was convenient or inconvenient.
Sometimes, the readings for Mass make a special connection to episodes in our lives. Today is once such day for me. Forty-two years ago today, I experienced one of the first truly moving and educational episodes in my life. Mrs. Hick’s fourth grade class at the Harmony Elementary School in Middletown, NJ, was to take a class trip on June 5, 1968. We were in the peak of spring and summer vacation was just around the corner with our dreams of “No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks.”
Instead we awoke to the radio news of an assassination attempt. So we turned from the alram clock radio to the big black and white television set that dominated our living room. The bus and the zoo could wait for another day.
In the early morning hours of that day, a continent away, Robert F. Kennedy was addressing his supporters in the ballroom of the The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles where he had just won the California primary. In a nation divided over the Vietnam War, RFK was emerging as the popular leader to pick up the baton from President Lyndon Johnson and get the nomination to run for president from his party.
Leaving the ballroom, RFK went through the hotel kitchen after being told it was a shortcut. In a crowded kitchen passageway, Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian-American (who felt betrayed by Kennedy's support for Israel in the June 1967 Six-Day War, which had begun exactly one year before the assassination), opened fire and shot Kennedy, who died early the next morning.
At his funeral, the late Senator Ted Kennedy spoke of his brother in words that recall Paul’s letter to Timothy:
My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: 'Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.'
(From “Edward M. Kennedy Address at the Public Memorial Service for Robert F. Kennedy,” American Rhetoric: Top 100 Speeches)
Action
How does the story of the widow’s contribution move you to action? What actions are you propelled to do, not because they are easy, but because they are hard?
