Fr. Rick’s Homily: 32 Sunday in Ordinary Time, 11/10/24
1 Kgs 17:10-16; Ps 146:7-10; Heb 9:24-28; Mk 12:38-44
The extraordinary generosity and faith of the widows in the first reading today from Kings and Mark’s gospel are familiar to us if we have been coming to Mass for several years. Both instances seem so outrageous that we are probably comfortable in just attributing them to exceptionally graced moments from a different millennium in a different culture.
I actually tried to do this a couple times in my life, before I went to the seminary, but always held enough back for several months rent, car insurance and a catastrophic health insurance policy. If I would have had a jar of flour somewhere, I probably would have given that away rather easily. I mean, what would you do with a jar of flour anyway? That’s why we have Famous Dave’s cornbread mix. No flour needed!
To many of us, giving everything away would seem irresponsible and just make us more dependent on the generosity and hard work of others. I’d have to think hard about giving someone money who just gave all their money and resources away anyway. It’s a big stretch for people living in our culture and our age.
But the lessons from these scriptures today take on a more practical flavor when we apply the basic tenets of Christian Stewardship and Catholic Social Teaching.
Stewardship basically says that everything good comes from God. Every gift of time, talent, treasure, energy, good health, good looks or competitive spirit that we have comes from God. These gifts ultimately belong to God. We are expected to share in proportion to the gifts we have received with special attention to the most vulnerable.
Now that actually COULD be done without just transferring the responsibility to other people. The idea of stewardship means reminding ourselves, perhaps at the beginning of each day, that everything actually does belong to God and is needed for God’s plan to save us. All of us. God wants to save all of us and doesn’t want anyone living in despair and hopelessness. By the time we are in our 20’s and 30’s we should have a pretty good idea of most of the gifts that God has given us. We would need to be closely associated with a community of real believers to figure out and develop our spiritual gifts. We would likely need some pretty good advice from wise people to determine who could best utilize the gifts we have to share and to do this with God’s plan of salvation in mind. Again, God does not just leave it up to us to individually decide what to do with our gifts. Notice that the widows gave their wealth to the prophet and the temple. This implies that there is a more transcendent way of seeing the world and our purpose for being here.
I think this type of living and prioritizing is a big huge leap for most of us, but it is possible. We would have to trust, not just God, but the community of believers around us. We would have to really believe that God made us to live in an interdependent community, like in Israel of the Old Testament and Acts of the Apostles on the New Testament.
Thousands of years later we do have contemporary models for integrating this transcendent, community-oriented way of living and sharing.
I previously mentioned Catholic Social Teaching as a way of following the examples of the widows in today’s scriptures.
The introduction to Catholic Social Teaching on the US Bishops’ website reads as follows: (Part of this is written out in the bulletin today, so you don’t have to memorize it)…
‘Catholic social teaching emerges from the truth of what God has revealed to us about Himself. We believe in the Triune God whose very nature is communal and social. God the Father sends His only Son Jesus Christ and shares the Holy Spirit as His gift of love. God reveals Himself to us as one who is not alone, but rather as one who is relational, one who is Trinity. Therefore, we who are made in God’s image share this communal, social nature. We are called to reach out and to build relationships of love and justice.’ (USCCB Website)
So, being social, relational and even Trinitarian, we believe about everybody what we believe about ourselves. We are all made in God’s image and likeness. Catholic Social Teaching gives us 7 basic themes to help us understand the basic human needs of all people. (Again, these are in the bulletin). They include:
Life and Dignity of the Human Person
Preferential Option for the Poor
Dignity of Work
Solidarity and Subsidiarity
Call to Family, Participation and Community
Rights and Responsibilities
Care for God’s Creation
If these themes were actually in the front of our minds each morning and were considered in our decision-making, our jars of flour and oil would never go empty. What we didn’t have would be readily available among the other believers. This is actually within God’s plan starting with Abraham almost 4000 years ago. It’s counter-cultural for us Americans, but it IS doable.
Catholic Social Teaching – https://www.usccb.org/offices/justice-and-peace/catholic-social-teaching (one click on the website bulletin)
This is actually a great subject for consideration during this Veterans Day Holiday weekend. Our troops deployed all around the world know a lot about trust, living in close interdependent communities and mission. The mission we have given them could cost them their very lives and certainly disrupts their lives and families on a regular basis. Their mission is to protect American interests which include our security and also our economic interests. Good stewardship by all of us makes the military mission much simpler, less dangerous and more meaningful.
If our use of resources were carefully considered in the context of God’s plan for ALL OF US, we would likely have a less threatening and antagonistic presence throughout the world. This would be better for us, our military and all the other people in the world.
When we send our American troops out to protect American ‘interests’, we should understand very specifically what those interests are. How do those interests affect our relations with other countries throughout the world?
This might be fun…
Check your retirement account – In which companies do you share some ownership? What do they produce and what market do they cater to? Economic? Security? Who benefits the most?
Consider sending your capital gains from this past week to Catholic Community Services or some group which lifts people up and prepares them to be good stewards such as http://www.givemeachanceutah.org/. Or give some of it to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. See insert.
Going forward this week we should at least aspire to the lowest bar as demonstrated by the rich people in today’s Gospel: “”Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.”
Finally, give yourself a big pat on the back for every time you hired and helped train a new employee. (Dignity of Work, Community and Participation, Solidarity and Subsidiarity).