By Beth DeCristofaro
She answered, "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." …
the LORD, the God of Israel, says, 'The jar of flour shall not go empty, nor
the jug of oil run dry, until the day when the LORD sends rain upon the
earth.'" (1 Kings 17:12, 14)
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 12:42-44)
Piety
God, you blessed the
widow with deep faith in you, and she offered you all she had. We pray:
Let us know the joy of giving, O God. (From “Give Us This Day,” November 2015,
p. 86.)
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“The Widow’s Might”, JESUS MAFA, Cameroon, Africa
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Study
These readings can
prompt us to look at our own paucity in order recognize how we might best give
our whole livelihood by loving from our places of deepest distraction or
resistance to love. My junior year of
college was spent in France. Among many
positive lessons I learned about was that of not having enough. Yes, I was in France, studying in Universite!
Remarkable! But
beyond rent and tuition, I had very little to live on. I lived in anxiety that I would not have
enough to eat every day. Today, I still
feel myself holding back when asked to donate because of the implanted desire
to hold onto a few coins even though my financial status is far from those days. I no longer want. There is, however, a small, remaining sense
of what the widows in today’s readings might have felt as they dropped coins
into the basket or rolled out the last ounce of flour for flatbread. What comes next if now I have nothing?
What I am still
learning is that God is always next and now and forever.
Action
With Jesus, we can
give all. We can offer over the anxiety
of hunger to feed someone hungrier than ourselves. We can be impelled by fear that our civil
rights are threated to volunteer with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in
America in order to reduce violence. We
can trust God instead of our need to control by giving more space and time to
others allowing them to blossom. We can give
over our worry about fundamentalism or divisions within religions by taking
part in ecumenical dialog thus strengthening both civic and sacred communities. We can see our deepest vulnerabilities as the
place where God is protectively present and do what God would do. Love with our All.
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