Nov. 11, 2012: 32nd Sunday in Ordinary B

Many of us own a home, and we may still have a relatively large mortgage that we're paying off. A few days ago, I bought a home without a mortage; I paid all cash. With this decision to buy a home in Baton Rouge, I willno longer entertain the thought that I'll go back to Dallas someday to be near my parents for I have adopted Baton Rouge as my home and it will be my home for many years to come. So how large is the house? I bought a small, modest one that doesn't require landscaping or maintenance, which is a big plus. It's footprint is about 4 ft. 8in width, 4 ft. height by 8 1/2 ft. length. I bought a mausoleum crypt. 

Hopefully, I will move into this house many years from now -- maybe 40 years or so -- which will give me time to prepare for my move into my new house. This purchase certainly changes the priorities in my life; priorities that used to matter much, may not matter much anymore. Possessions? Knowing that I can only fit in there wearing a set a clothes with a rosary in my pocket, I can't bring anything I own, such as a computer, into my new house. I must realize that everything I own is simply a tool and not something to cling on to. Seats of honor and prestige? My neighbors will be rich, poor, famous, infamous, saints, and sinners; yet, we all will have the same marble doors locking us behind the crypt. 

Knowing that all of us will end up in a small 4 feet by 5 feet by 8 feet home one day, we shouldn't spend our lives collecting and acquiring. Instead, we need to be spending our lives giving away. We need to learn a lesson from the poor widow from the gospel who put two small coins in the temple treasury. Jesus makes her the model of generosity; he said to his disciples, "this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors." One can imagine the jaws of the disciples dropping. Were not the contributions of others far more important? Was not this woman's donation practically worthless, so insignificant as to be beneath mentioning? Jesus explains: God measures the gifts given him on a basis totally different from human calculations. He looks at the inner motives of the heart. The others were content to give God some of their overflow, having provided sufficiently for themselves; but this destitute woman had given God what she could not afford, all she had, her whole livelihood. She had given not out of her surplus but out of her substance. Her gift meant that she would have to rely on God even to provide her next meal. Such reckless generosity parallels the self-emptying generosity of God himself, who did not hold back from us even his beloved Son. She is a model of the poor who are blessed by God because their whole treasure is not in earthly possessions but in God.

What are we giving God today? Are we giving God our trust, our confidence, our entire self? Or, is our heart divided; we know that God deserves nothing but the gift of ourselves, but we are only willing to give a portion.