For the Mass Readings on the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B), Dr. Pitre discusses the scene where the Widow gives all of her money, albeit minuscule in quantity, to the temple out of love for God, transforming it to massive in quality. Additionally, the Church compares this story in Mark's Gospel to that of the encounter between Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath, which is another display of a woman's great faith, giving the last of what she has.
Transcript for the above video:
Jesus then uses her as an example. He calls his disciples and he says, “Truly, I say to you, this widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For they contributed out of there abundance; but she out of her poverty put in
everything she had, her whole living.” Alright, so what's going on here? Well, what is Jesus saying? Basically this is this widow's last two coins, this is all she has. She's put in the last of her money. What has she chosen to do with the last of her money? She's chosen to make an offering to God, right, and to the Temple. Now
does the Temple need her two last coins? Does the Temple need her quadrans, her penny? No, the Temple was covered in gold, they had lots of priests, it was extremely wealthy. It was basically the economic center of Jerusalem.
Think about this, in the First Century A.D. you didn't have banks, so where the treasury was at was kind of the economic center of the city. So it was the cultic center, sacrificial center, religious center, but also the economy was revolved around the Temple. So
it has all the money it could possibly need, but this woman takes her money and she makes an offering to God. Now was it a whole burnt offering? Was it money for some gold for the Temple? Was it money for a free will offering? We don't know. Was she paying her tithe for the year? We don't know, but what we do know is that it's all that she had.
Jesus takes that moment and he uses it to teach the apostles
that although the rich people are putting quantitatively more money than she did, she qualitatively far exceeded them with her donation because she gave all that she had. She gave the last of her living to God and to his sacrifices and to the Temple.
So it's a beautiful passage, a really powerful passage contrasting the wealth and prestige and esteem and external desires to be praised of the scribes with the interior charity, generosity, and love for God of this poor widow, who, by the way, in a First Century society, if she's a widow who is totally on her own, she could through this act basically put herself into utter destitution and utter poverty. She may or may not have family to even care for her at this point, and that seems to be the case if this is all that she has. So Jesus, in other words, is trying to teach us, trying to teach the disciples, about what offerings to God, what a true offering to God is. It’s the one where we give everything. If you think of the previous Sunday’s readings, right, to love the Lord your God with all your soul means to love him with your whole life, without remainder, leaving nothing over, holding nothing back.
The first commandment, which is actually a modified version of the Jewish Shema that would be prayed 3 times a day (Jesus actually adds to it, as Dr. Pitre explains), sums up the first three of the ten commandments, which are traditionally found on the 1st tablet of the ten commandments. And, the second, pointed at love of neighbor, is the thread that connects the remaining 7 of the ten commandments traditionally to be found on the 2nd tablet.
This video will also briefly cover the importance of daily prayer, like the Shema, and the impact it has on the way one lives his life when persistent in prayer (and when someone is not).
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