INTRODUCTION
The first reading and the Gospel today present poor widows who sacrificially gave their whole lives and means of livelihood to God, foreshadowing the supreme sacrifice Jesus would offer by giving His life for others. In the first reading, taken from the First Book of Kings, a poor widow who has barely enough food for herself and her son welcomes the prophet Elijah as a man of God, offers all her food to him and receives her reward from God in the form of a continuing daily supply of food. In the Gospel, Jesus contrasts the external signs of honor sought by the scribes with the humble, sacrificial offering of a poor widow and declares that she has found true honor in God’s eyes. The offerings of both widows in the first reading and the gospel foreshadow the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus recounted by the writer of the letter to the Hebrews. He calls Jesus the High Priest of the New Testament, who through his obedience to the Father and unconditional love for his people offered himself as a sacrifice for the expiation of our sins – a sacrifice that is in no way comparable to the sacrifices made by the poor widows.
FIRST READING: 1 Kings 17:10-16
The miracle of Zarephath is situated among the three powerful manifestations of God to the people in the time of king Ahab:
1. The shutting of the heavens against rainfall for a period of three and half years(1 Kgs 17:1).
2. The miracle of the multiplication of food for the widow of Zarephath and her son (1 Kgs 17:10-16)
3. The defeat of the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal by Elijah at mount Carmel (1 Kgs 18: 19-40).
However, today’s passage tells us that the manifestation of God’s blessing has neither geographical limit nor choice of persons. Zarephath was a pagan territory and the widow was a pegan, yet her status was not in anyway a barrier to the divine miraculous unending blessing.
We must remark the richness of this miracle. We are in a context of a climatic change; a serious drought that caused an extreme shortage of food because there was no water to grow crops. The heaven was shut by God through the words of the prophet Elijah because of the apostasy of the people and their king who abandoned Yahweh their God and adopted Baal (through Jezebel the pegan wife of Ahab that imported Baal to Israel and instituted prophets to his service) whom they considered as the god of rain and fertility. By shutting the heavens against rain, Yahweh wanted to prove to the people that he is an omnipotent God, and to play down the importance attached to Baal. The impotency of Baal is demonstrated in his inability to reverse the state of things.
It was in this terrible moment of lack that God sent Elijah to the poor widow of Zarephath, and how disappointing it was for Elijah to hear that the house God sent him to feed from was in a state of serious lack: “As your God lives, I have nothing, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a pitcher; and now I am gathering a couple of sticks, that I may go and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” The prophet was not carried away by these words. Thus he keptdid focus on his mission. He immediately made a prophetic declaration to counter the hopeless situation of the woman: “…For thus says the Lord the God of Israel, ‘The jar of meal shall not be spent, and the pitcher of oil shall not fail, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.” This prophetic words came to fulfilment because the woman accepted them while believing in the God of Elijah even though she did not know him, “As the Lord your God lives…”. Let us remark that she did not say my God, but your God. This is suggestive of the background of the woman (a pagan). It equally points to something important. She acknowledged the God of Elijah as a living God. This is a fundamental step to receiving the miracle prepared on her behalf.
MESSAGE:
1. God chooses to reveal himself when, where and to whoever he wishes to. Of all the people in the land, God chose to reveal himself to this poor widow. It tells us that our God sees and takes account of our human conditions. When we are tempted to lose hope, let us remember that God is somewhere watching and at the appointed time (the hour of hope) his miracle will surely locate us.
2. The symbol of the handful of meal in the jar and the pitcher means the absence of God. When God is absent in our lives, we live in a state of spiritual drought. But it was necessary that the jar and the pitcher be totally emptied of the old stock. That is why the prophet insisted that she empties the jar and the pitcher. The old stock can be a very big obstacle to the new stock of God’s blessing. We must empty our old self for God to come in.
3. The passage makes us to understand that no condition has the final say in our lives. God alone has. We need to be disposed to accept the word of God with faith so that our lives may be touched and our condition of material and spiritual lack thus transformed. The Zarephath woman believed the word of God spoken through the prophet and her life and that of her son never remained the same.
4. Our generosity to others especially the poor and abandonned is a powerful means of attracting God’s blessing. To be generous does not mean giving from our abundance, but our disposition to share even the little we have. When we empty our jars and pitchers with and for others, God fills them to the full.
SECOND READING: Hebrews 9: 24-28
The letter to the Hebrews was written for Jewish converts to Christ, in part to help them cope with the loss of the comforts they had enjoyed from the institutions of Judaism. The Temple authorities had refused to permit early Jewish Christians to participate either in the synagogue or the Temple services. The author teaches these Judeo-Christians that Jesus, alive in the community, has become the Holy of Holies and the High Priest, around which pair all Temple worship revolved. Since Jesus has replaced both the Temple and human mediators, the Christians need not go to the Temple for worship. In today’s passage, the institutions in question are sanctuary, sacrifice, and judgment. Under the Old Covenant, a priest conducted an annual ritual sacrifice in the sanctuary of the Temple, slaughtering a lamb. He further reveals that Jesus Himself has replaced the whole class of ancient priests, and that the earthly sanctuary has been made obsolete by the sanctuary that is Heaven, where Jesus the High Priest intercedes for us directly before God. Similarly, the repetitive annual sacrifices have been replaced by Jesus’ once-for-all sacrifice made at the appointed time of the messianic era. The old sacrifices were meant to forestall an unfavorable judgment by God. The new expectation is brighter and more positive: salvation for those who eagerly await Him.
MESSAGE:
We are the new Temple of Christ where he exercise his priestly ministry, and our hearts are his inner sanctuary where he has poured the blood that has sealed our eternal covenant with him. Let us not look for him any other place but in our hearts and make them available for him. By offering himself totally to the Father on our behalf, we are meant to offer ourselves to him through our brothers and sisters especially the most needy.
GOSPEL: Mark 12 : 41-44
Beginning from chapter 11 of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus confronts the Temple authorities and challenges the abuses in the “organized religion” of his time. One by one he engages the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the scribes and the Herodians in debate. Jesus’ open condemnation of the religious-political and economic establishment is summed up when he accused the leaders of having transformed the Temple into a den of robbers (Mark 11:17). Today’s Gospel text demonstrates why all those who held traditional positions of religious power found Jesus’ presence and preaching so disturbing. His denunciation of the scribes forms the conclusion of the series of Jerusalem conflict stories. These stories show the widening gulf between Jesus and the Temple authorities that will result in the Sanhedrin’s decision to get rid of him.
Today’s gospel reveals the generous and total offering made by a poor woman, popularly known as the widow’s mite. Not condemning the rich anyways, Jesus was forced to compare their offering with that of the poor widow.The very rich put in much, and the moderately well-off put in a decent amount. And all those who had gone before this widow had limited their giving by holding back a major portion of their money for their own use. This widow stood alone as the one who had turned over, as an offering to God for His use, everything she had — two leptons. Those two, almost worthless coins represented her last shred of security, her fragile earthly thread of hope for the future. With her deep desire to be an obedient servant of God, the widow gave all she had as an offering — even her future — for the sake of God. In other words, she gave herself totally into God’s hands, with the sure conviction that He would give her the support she needed.
MESSAGE:
1. We need to appreciate the widows in our parish communities:
In our seemingly prosperous society, widows (and widowers), in addition to their deep grief, often suffer from economic loss, from the burden of rearing a family alone, and from a strange isolation from friends which often sets in soon after protestations of support at their spouses’ funerals. Let us learn to appreciate the widows and widowers of our parish community. Their loneliness draws them closer to God and to stewardship in the parish. They are often active participants in all the liturgical celebrations, offering prayers for their families and for their parish family. Frequently, they are active in the parish organizations, as well as in visiting and serving the sick and the shut-ins. Hence, let us appreciate them, support them, encourage them, and pray for them, love them and be close to them. May we like Jesus be the hope of their faith in God through our kind words and gestures.
2. We need to empty ourselves:
Can we, like the poor widow, find the courage to share the wealth and talents we hold? Can we stop dribbling out our stores of love and selflessness and sacrifice and compassion and dare to pour out our whole heart, our whole being, our “whole life” into the love-starved coffers of this world? (Fr. Antony Kadavil). What do we have that we think not enough for the Lord? Let us learn that the most precious gift we can offer to the Lord is the total giving of our lives to him.
PRAYER
God of the poor and the needy, You never cease to provide for your children who often live in drought of different needs. You have assured us of your costant closeness to us. When things grow difficult, show us that you watch our lives and takes account of our situations. May our faith teach us always recognise that our lives have no meaning without you, and so work as if everything depends on us while praying and trusting as if everything depends on you. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
PAX VOBIS!
