32nd Sunday Ordinary Time November 10, 2024

Readings: 1Kings 17.10-16  Hebrews 9.24-28  Mark 12.38-44

Today’s readings showcase two widows as examples of extraordinary generosity. for they give, not from their abundance, but all the meagre means they have for survival. Yet their extreme generosity illustrates a profound truth about God and about what is important in life.

It is Jesus who manifests supremely the Creator God who gives everything away. He does this in his ministry to the poor and marginalised, but above all in his passion and death on the Cross. The widow whose selfless act of generosity touched the heart of Jesus in today’s gospel prefigures his own great act of self-giving love soon to be accomplished on the hill of Calvary. By this act he sacrificed himself, as the Second reading today reminds us, ‘to do away with sin once and for all’ (Hebrews 9:26) and so became the great High Priest of our Faith.

Today’s readings challenge us to imitate the generosity of the widows in and become sacraments of God’s self-giving love in a world increasingly preoccupied with possession and security. Let us be givers and not just consumers.

I end with a reflection from the pen of Kahlil Gibran that sums up the message of today’s readings: there are those who give little of the much which they give it for recognition, and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome. And there are those who have little and give it all. These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty. There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward. And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism. And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of Virtue. They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space. Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.’

 Fr. Terry.