By Fr. Robert Chiesa, SJ
Homily of the 32nd SUNDAY B in Ordinary Time
November 10, 2024
In the Bible we often hear that God is especially eager to protect widows, orphans, and migrants. The migrants of biblical times, like migrants of today, were compelled to leave their homeland for political or religious reasons. The bible also speaks of God’s care for orphans. Even though we do not like to use that word today, there are many children today, too, who have been deprived of normal family life because of war or domestic violence. They have to beg, borrow, or steal in order to survive. Women in biblical times were completely subservient to men and, when deprived of a husband’s support because of his death, a widow had to fend for herself. All of these—migrants, orphans, and widows—had to depend on the kindness of others.
We met two widows in today’s readings. The widow in the Old Testament reading is foraging for herself and her child in a struggle to survive. God comes to her rescue through the prophet Elijah. She believes in the promise Elijah makes to her if she will be generous and help him with what little she has. She shares with him out of her poverty, and she is gifted with enough to last her through the year’s crisis.
The widow in the New Testament has already been reduced to poverty thanks to the greed of the scribes, who glory in the honor they receive from people, but who, as Jesus says, “devour the houses of widows.” I wonder what he means by that. Maybe they burden the widows so much with temple contributions or taxes that they eventually have to go out and beg on the streets. There is a problem in my own country, where restaurant workers who are not highly paid have to pay taxes even on the tips they receive from their customers.
But here Jesus points out this one widow who puts all she has, her two small coins, into the temple treasury. She has two coins, and we might think that she could keep one for herself. But no, she is too generous and gives everything she has for the upkeep of the temple services. But much of that probably goes into the pockets of the temple authorities—another way that they devour what the poor people have.
I started out by saying that in the Bible we often hear that God is especially eager to protect widows, orphans, and migrants. But God can only do that through what we do as members of society to protect the weak and the vulnerable among us—the urban poor, the homeless, victims of domestic or sexual violence, or people on the brink of despair. We are urged to make some sacrifices in order to benefit those who depend on the kindness of strangers.
When we say we “sacrifice” something, we usually mean that we suffer some loss so as to benefit someone else. In baseball, with a man on first base, the batter can make a “sacrifice bunt,” which puts him out but advances the runner to second base. Or, with a man on third, a “sacrifice fly” can bring the runner home to score maybe the winning run. But that meaning of sacrifice is rooted in the original biblical meaning of “sacrifice”—which literally means to “make sacred or holy.”
Sacrifices in the Old Testament consisted of slaughtering some animal victim as a symbol of coming closer to God. The Old Testament has a fixation on pouring out blood, which is seen as the symbol of life, in order to come into closer communion with God, who is the source of life. This idea carries over into calling Jesus’ death, in which his blood is shed, a fulfillment of the Old Testament “sacrifices.” And thus, we speak of the “sacrifice of the Mass,” with the Body and Blood of Jesus bringing us into direct contact with the life and death of Jesus in the sacrament. When the Body and Blood of Jeus enter into us in communion, we are brought into direct touch with Jesus and the very life of God.
And that should change our life so that we truly become the eyes and ears, the mouth and hands of the Lord reaching out to heal the wounds of the people and society around us. We might not be called upon to sacrifice our very life to save someone, although fire fighters will rush into burning buildings to bring someone out into safety. In a more practical daily life, we can sacrifice our time or energy—we can use our “two coins”—to relieve the loneliness of someone who is suffering from some loss, or to comfort and strengthen someone who feels hopeless and helpless after some failure or has to live on the edges of society. These are the widows, the orphans, and the migrants we encounter in our own daily life. In engaging with them, we allow God to touch them through our eyes, our ears, our hands, our words, and our palpable concern.
Let us reflect on someone we may have neglected during the past week—someone who felt worse because of something we did or did not do. And let us resolve to let Jesus work through us by our heartfelt concern for the weak and vulnerable members of our own immediate surroundings.