Saturday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 358

A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents.
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.

Hearing this Gospel on Saturday, we associate the widow's gift of two small coins with Mary's two-fold gift of her virginity and her only Son. A poor woman, forced to give birth in a sheep cote and placing the infant in a manger, she models the simplicity of relying completely on the Lord, and on the husband the Lord has given her. Nor is she possessive of the child. She joyfully shows him to the noisy shepherds who come to see him, and she surrenders him immediately to Simon, the old man in the temple. He danced around the chamber with the baby in his arms as if the boy were the Torah. 

[In Chabad Hasidic thought, the traditional dancing with the Torah allows the Jew to act as the "feet" of the Torah, taking the Torah where it wishes to go, as feet transport the head. This is thought as an act of submission to the will of God as expressed in the dictates of the Torah. It is an act that causes the Jew to inherently and naturally observe the Jewish faith. And just as the head benefits from the mobility of the feet, so does the Torah become exalted by the commitment of the Jew.^[7]

As a sometime parish pastor and director of a retreat house, I have raised money to support the Church and its ministries. And, while visiting hospitals and jails I often heard the familiar trope about the endless money-raising sermons. Some individuals swear that every pastor of every church begs for money every time they attend a Catholic or Protestant service. And I believe their stories, though I might doubt they've attended any church more than once. 

Money is dear to us; it is more precious and personal than sex, more consuming than love or relationships. Many people cannot imagine life without it; they have long forgotten their dependence upon the parents who asked, and expected, nothing of them when they were infants. They saw how people regarded money and they learned to worship it. Accumulating a small piece of wealth, they guard it against predators, be they greedy merchants or needy persons. Money is self-worth, freedom, and god to them. 

Jesus saw that idolatry there in Jerusalem, outside the temple, as fat cats flouted their apparent generosity. He was not impressed. 

But what blew him away was this poor widow with her two small copper coins. He was the only one who noticed her. Only God could appreciate her generosity; only the Spirit of God could respond to her in kind. 

It takes poverty like hers, or like that of Simeon, to tell us the worth and meaning of money. The wealthy have no conception. My jailed and ailing friends, jealously protecting their money and resenting every demand for it, have no idea. Poverty reminds us that everything we own belongs to God. Even our bodies are given to us, along with our interdependence on those around us. Money deceives us because it seems like a possession that can be accumulated. 

The Lord opens our eyes to its true worth when he commands us to look at her:

"For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood."