This is my homily for today, the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B. The readings for today are here.
We’re getting closer to the end. The warm months are coming to an end. Our church year is coming to an end. We’re reaching the end of Mark’s Gospel. And although it may not be something we think about that often, our lives draw closer to their end, at least their end here on earth, with each passing day. It’s the time of year that may cause to look back on the seasons and years that have passed, and ask ourselves, “Have I been living rightly? Am I preparing myself to be with God in the times to come?”
In today’s Gospel story of the scribes and the poor widow, Jesus helps to get us in the right mindset for our own end times by setting up a sharp contrast of two alternative ways of living our lives. The scribes live for this time. They are supposed to be devoted to God’s Law, but rather than working to live lives of genuine holiness, they settle for the reputation of being holy They wear long robes so everyone knows a holy person is in their midst; they make public appearances in the marketplace because they covet the deferential greetings of their fellow men and women; they occupy the seats of honor at banquets so their alleged public holiness is on display.
Jesus condemns the scribes in today’s Gospel, not because they are scholars of the law, but because they are hypocrites. He says they “devour the houses of widows”. Widows led precarious, vulnerable existences without a husband to protect them and support them. When husbands died, the scribes, who were the attorneys of that time, would be appointed as executor of the estate which the widow depended on for her livelihood. The scribe was entitled to a share of the estate as his fee. Apparently some scribes exploited these widows by charging exorbitant fees that would leave the widow destitute. She would have to sell the family home in order to eat. Thus, the greedy scribes devoured the widows’ houses.
This is exactly the kind of thing that got under Jesus’s skin: religious officials who were publicly pious, but who privately exploited the poorest and most vulnerable for their own profit.
After condemning the scribes who live for this time, Jesus then points out a widow, who may well have been one of the scribes’ victims. She has only a couple of coins which, together, don’t even add up to enough money to feed a family for a single day. And yet she offers her coins to the Temple – that is, to God. She isn’t living for this time; she’s living for all time.
The message couldn’t be clearer: in God’s kingdom, the poor, anonymous and exploited will be held in high honor and esteem, whereas the elite hypocrites here on earth will be subject to a severe condemnation after this life ends. As we get closer to our own end time, it’s good for us to think about whether we are living more like the scribes who live for this time, or like the poor widow, who has embraced the way of holy poverty, because she is living for all time.
The notion of holy poverty comes from the church’s vast store of wisdom. Freely embracing poverty is not something intuitive to most of us. On the other hand, we may reflect that being wealthy doesn’t bring us closer to the kingdom of heaven; on the contrary, it brings a host of spiritual perils, including the peril of hypocrisy. Paradoxically, people who are poor can often be more generous with their meager resources, as we see the widow in today’s Gospel story. I’m willing to wager that many of us have parents or grandparents who were not well-off financially, but were very generous with whatever they had, for their family and friends.
To help us to live lives of holy poverty, the church proposes saints, genuinely holy women and men, to model our own lives after. It’s not difficult to think of saints who have embraced a holy poverty, even giving up lives of wealth and prominence, to follow Jesus. Surely the most famous of these saints is Francis of Assisi, a young man from a prominent family who enjoyed fashionable clothes and the fine life, until he had a religious conversion and he gave everything away to follow Jesus. Our own Pope Francis, whose given name is Jorge Bergoglio, had St. Francis of Assisi in mind when he chose the name Francis as his papal name.
The Holy Father thinks all of us might do well to find and embrace our inner Francis of Assisi, or our inner widow from today's Gospel reading. The day after he was elected, Pope Francis told reporters that he longs for our church, with its history of high officials coming from nobility and living in fine palaces filled with priceless artwork – Pope Francis longs for our church to become, not a collector or keeper of wealth, but rather a poor church for the poor. Think about that for a moment: our Catholic church should be a poor church for the poor. As an example of embracing holy poverty, Pope Francis has refused to move into the papal palace; he continues to live in modest quarters in the St. Martha guesthouse.
In choosing to embrace this way of holy poverty, Pope Francis has chosen the way of the poor widow. We’re called to choose, too. We can choose the way of the scribes and live for this time; or we can choose the way of the poor widow and Pope Francis and live for all time. Some of us are rich, some are poor, and some are in the middle somewhere. Those of us who are poor actually have a leg up on the rest of us: we know Jesus has a special place in his heart for those who are poor; it is to them to whom Jesus especially targeted his Good News. But this story of the poor widow urges us, whatever our economic status, to find ways of embracing holy poverty, as we get closer to the end of our own lives. If we don’t have money to share, can we give the gift of our time? Or perhaps there are talents we can share.
Embracing holy poverty isn’t impossible. There are people in our own faith community who already live the way of holy poverty, living simple, modest lives and helping to make us a poor church for the poor. Who are these folks? They are not always the prominent, well-known people; that’s one of the tricky things about identifying the saints among us: they are often the quiet, anonymous ones, like the widow in today’s Gospel. They can be the hardest for us to notice. Yet they are making this place holier and more blessed by their presence. As we get closer to the end, of the year and of our lives, it can behoove us to open our eyes, and look for the holy poverty being lived out, right in our midst, and try to follow their examples.
It was striking how closely the Old Testament reading of Elijah and the widow fit w.ith the Gospel. The miracle of the flour and the oil that didn't run out for over a year until the rains came was a lesson in the providence of God. The widow didn't get a year's worth of flour and oil all at once, just what they needed each day, "give us this day our daily bread".
ReplyDeleteBeautiful point, Katherine. She wasn’t made a billionaire as a reward. That would not have been a gift but a curse. There are a lot of stories about lottery winners ending up in ruins.
DeleteI admire Jim's effort to make "poverty" the hero of this story, and therefore invite men as well as women to embrace poverty.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the heroines of the stories are both women who are not only poor but also lack status and power. We have had a lot of men and women religious in the church who have embraced poverty, but they have not lacked status or power.
The men of the stories, the prophet and the scribes, did not lack status or power. Jesus was very critical of the scribes, and the woman in her own way was critical of the prophet "fine for you (with all your status and power) to make such demands but what about me?"
Clericalism is not just about money. It is even more about status and power. This gospel has the potential to be a very powerful witness against clericalism. Are we ready to go there?
FWIW, I preached twice on Sunday, and gave two versions of this homily. The first version was too long, so I pared it down to the version that I've published here. In the first version, I had included a couple of sentences critical of Catholic prelates who have been hypocritical like the scribes.
DeleteSome random thoughts, including heretical ones, no doubt.
ReplyDeleteI don't see much to be celebrated about poverty per se. Yes, when poor people make sacrifices for those even less well off than themselves, their charity and empathy is all the more admirable, but I would rather the were not poor and yet still had those charitable impulses. Certainly you don't have to be poor to be charitable.
It sometimes strikes me as a little strange within certain strains of Christianity that the material world is derogated. When God made the world, he "saw that it was good." I think within Old Testament Judaism, it was often the case that material prosperity was looked on as a sign of God's favorability. I always remember this when hearing the story of the rich young man who could not bring himself to sell everything and give it to the poor.
Jesus had rich and powerful backers. Apparently Mary Magdalen was one, and Joseph of Arimathea another. What we know of the criticism of Jesus is that he "ate with sinners and tax collectors." Presumably they were not the poor.
I like Pope Francis, and this is not a criticism, but he is not living a life of poverty, and there is no reason why he should. My high school was run by the Christian Brothers (FSC), and while they took a vow of poverty, they wanted for nothing. There were generous patrons who supplied cars to the community and other perks, such as hot tickets to sporting events. They ate well and lived comfortably, in a way. I am not sure I would have been happy with the kind of "poverty" they took on, never personally owning anything. It was all the property of the community, and I can see how that might not be easy in many ways, but it beats many other forms of poverty.
After my high school graduation in 1965, we heard from various sources that within a few years, almost all the brothers who had been our teachers left the order. Often it was the teachers we thought most highly of. One of the brothers had become a close family friend my senior year, and later when so many were leaving (including him, to marry and have a family), he said one factor was the fact that when so much of the communal prayer and other such activities became optional, people realized how lonely they were.
DeleteScripture passages about poverty are filtered through a lot of cultural attitudes.
ReplyDeleteIn America, somebody with money who chooses to live simply and gives away a lot of dough is a saint. They get buildings and park benches named after them. They have social capital.
Somebody who's just plain broke is a wastrel who's made poor choices and has no social capital. Nothing holy about it.
I had various American saints in mind when I wrote this particular homily. I realized that the ones who spring immediately to my mind all were in religious orders. (Mother Cabrini, Elizabeth Ann Seton, Katherine Drexel and, I hope soon, Solanus Casey.) As David notes, all had taken vows of poverty, but that's lived out within the structures of a religious communal life. I was trying to steer clear of religious order saints (although I landed on Francis of Assisi, who founded an order, but he was a little extreme even for his order.) I decided he's so well-known and beloved that I couldn't hold his religious order membership against him.
DeleteDon't know about Mother Cabrini, but Seton and Drexel came from well-off families. So did Bishop Frederic Baraga, who is popularly acclaimed a saint by Native people in northern Michigan, but whose cause has been slow to get going. I have visited his tomb in Marquette a few times. Raver belongs to the Baraga Society.
DeleteDorothy Day comes to mind as someone who never joined a religious order or had much money to give up but kept multiplying those loaves and fishes, as it were.
Solanus Casey, too, though he was a Capuchin.
People who are too poor to own cars are not destroying the world. People like me who have the quatloos to own a car ARE destroying it. Poverty is a good thing for the planet. Poverty shouldn’t mean destitution, starvation, lack of medical care. And we should rid ourselves of poverty, its flattening, crushing version. And we should make it easier for the poor, not harder.
ReplyDeleteEasier for the poor? What? It will just make them lazier!
DeleteHaha. Yeah, we all know you can work yourself to death in America and still not have enough food. The concentration camp business plan.
Delete