In today’s gospel, Jesus says, “Beware of the scribes… They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext, recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation.” Jesus denounced those scribes for their greedy hypocrisy. In recent decades, some televangelists and megachurches’ prosperity preachers have told believers ‘give your money to our ministry and God will bless you back with even more,‘ and then used the meager wealth of many widows to purchase mansions or private jets. This of course, gives scandal, leading many to think faith is just a grift and alienating people from Christ. Is it wrong for preachers to be paid? St. Paul defends the right of ministers to receive compensation, “for scripture says, ‘The laborer deserves his wages,’” but our holy work is not meant to be about getting rich.
The presence of unworthy motives among some Christian ministers is nothing new. St. Paul writes to the church at Corinth, “We are not like so many others who trade on the word of God for profit.” Such men were a problem in Paul’s day, too. So it might seem that poor widows should never be asked to give and that poor widows should never donate. That answer would be simple, yet God’s truth is not that simple.
In today’s first reading, the Prophet Elijah meets the widow of Zarephath during a time of great drought. He asks her for a cup of water and a bit of bread. She replies, “There is only a handful of flour in my jar and a little oil in my jug. Just now I was collecting a couple of sticks, to go in and prepare something for myself and my son; when we have eaten it, we shall die.” (She is preparing their last meal.) But Elijah says, “Do not be afraid. Go and do as you propose. But first make me a little cake and bring it to me. Then you can prepare something for yourself and your son. For the Lord, the God of Israel, says, ‘The jar of flour shall not go empty, nor the jug of oil run dry, until the day when the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’” She left and did as Elijah had said. And the poor widow, her fatherless child, and God’s prophet were all able to eat for a year. The jar of flour did not go empty, and the jug of oil did not run dry, as the Lord had foretold through Elijah. As today’s psalm tells, “The Lord keeps faith forever… The fatherless and the widow he sustains.”
And in our gospel today, when Jesus sees a poor widow putting into the Temple treasury two small coins, which is all she has and her whole livelihood, what does he do? He does not try to stop her. He does not criticize her for being foolish. He calls his disciples to himself, he points her out to them, and he glorifies her trust in God in having given more than all the others. Her deed is still remembered to this day. Would it have been better if she had not given her gift?
I do not have a one-size-fits-all answer for how much poor widows should give. The Catechism teaches that the Church’s precept, “’You shall help to provide for the needs of the Church,’ means that the faithful are obliged to assist with the material needs of the Church, each according to his own ability,” so there’s recognition that some people have greater or lesser ability than others to materially assist the Church’s mission in this world. But if even poor widows are sometimes called to give, to trust in the Lord and give him the chance to prove himself their faithful provider, how much more so are the rest of us called to be generous?
We live in the wealthiest country in all of human history, and yet most of us only give a tiny fraction of our income to church and charity to support the good works they do. What accounts for this? Some of it is from the love of money and some of it is from fear. The Book of Ecclesiastes says, “He who loves money is never satisfied by money, and he who loves wealth is never satisfied by income.” Some are slaves to their greed, and some are shackled to their anxiety.
As an early teen, I felt reluctance at giving any money away for anything. I thought, “Who knows what my future holds? What if I need that money later? Every dollar I give away now is another dollar I’m exposed to future, unseen danger.” My mindset wasn’t informed by the Gospel, but when I finally read the Gospels myself I encountered Jesus’ teaching there. He says: “Do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. … Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap.” The Lord was calling me beyond my comfort zone and into a deeper relationship with him.
I remember standing in St. Paul, Minnesota’s awe-inspiring cathedral. It was my first time there and I saw near the south exit a donation box labeled “For The Poor.” The largest bill in my wallet was a ten or a twenty, and I both wanted and very much did not want to give it, yet I knew what I should do. Once I had done it, I walked out smiling. It was a small donation, but even then I knew it was a big moment, and it changed the rest of my life.
I recall the story of one married couple. They used to pay their bills and then give to God if there was something left —and sometime there was nothing left. But God put it on their hearts to tithe consistently, so they began setting aside their gift to him first before paying their bills. And when they approached their giving in this way they discovered there was providentially always enough for both God and the bills.
God commands, “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test,” yet in his Old Testament Book of Malachi he says to test him in this: “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, and see if I do not open the floodgates of heaven for you, and pour down upon you blessing without measure!”
And so, without embarrassment, I ask you to be generous in giving, not only so that our church may put your gifts to good use, but for the sake of deepening your personal relationship with our good and faithful God.
The “ninth of Av,” also known as Tisha B’Av, is no ordinary day for observant Jews, but a day of fasting and abstaining, because ninth of Av has seen multiple calamities in Jewish history. First, during the Exodus, when the twelve spies sent by Moses returned from scouting the Land of Canaan, most of them voiced negative reports, saying there was no way The Promised Land could be conquered. The Hebrews despaired and cried and refused to proceed. As a consequence, God made his people spend 40 more years in the desert until almost all the adults of that generation had died without entering The Promised Land. The next calamity came in the days of the Prophet Jeremiah, after the founding of the Kingdom of Israel. In the sixth century B.C., the Jewish Temple built by King Solomon in Jerusalem was destroyed by the conquering Babylonians. With that disaster, the Jews were forced to leave their homeland and resettle in the East, and this Babylonian Exile lasted about seventy years until a significant number of Jews were able to return. A third catastrophe occurred in 70 A.D., when the Second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in response to a Jewish revolt. Not one stone was left upon another, as Jesus had foretold about 40 years before it came to pass. All of these devastating catastrophes, all three of these traumatic, mournful events (the denial of The Promised Land and the destruction of the first and second Temples) are remembered as occurring over the ninth day of Av.
On my last homily I talked about the fact that faith can produce miracles. Today’s scripture readings helps us to understand how we acquire that gift of faith and participate in God’s divine partnership plan.
Parishable Items 