Homily for 32d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
32d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Nov. 11, 1979

1 Kings 17: 10-16
Mark 12: 38-44
Don Bosco Prep, Ramsey, N.J.

“She went and did as Elijah said” (1 Kings 17: 15).

Elijah and the widow of Zarephath

Perhaps you’ve seen one of these signs in a shop window or taped onto a cash register:  “In God we trust.  All others pay cash.”  In one word, trust is what this morning’s scriptures are about.

Who trusts in God?  Two widows.  One widow lives in Zarephath; she is not even an Israelite, but a pagan of Phoenicia.  The prophet Elijah asks her to share her scanty meal with him, promising in Yahweh’s name that it shall not run out.

The other widow lives in Jerusalem and comes to the Temple to make a paltry offering—in today’s terms, about 80 cents.  Others—the Jerusalem Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Kennedys —may be giving huge sums (with much show), but this woman hasn’t even a Social Security check to count on.  Today 80 cents can get you a loaf of bread, but her two lepta would have gotten her a 2½ ounce roll—all her living for the day.

Despite the extremity of their need, both of these widows show trust.  For what does it mean to believe in God? It means to throw our whole selves into his hands, blindly.  A man lost in the wilderness may have only a compass to rely on.  Faith gives us only the compass of Yahweh’s promise of fidelity.

The Scriptures have faith’s opposite too.  And the contrast is striking.  Who are supposed to exhibit trust first of all?  The institutional leaders of Israel, of course.  But we hear our Lord denouncing the scribes for using their position of leadership for self-advancement—for self-trust, for lack of faith.  And Elijah the prophet calls on the Phoenician widow because he has been driven out of Israel by King Ahab.  The Israelite king should have ruled over his people as Yahweh’s deputy, but Ahab has put all of the prophets of Yahweh to the sword except that Elijah escaped.

So position, profession, wealth, coronation, learning, ordination—all these mean nothing.  The widow of Zarephath is saved only because “she went and did as Elijah said” even she was not an Israelite but a pagan.  Jesus praises the widow in the Temple for her blind, absolute trust in the Father’s Providence.  Only faith, only discipleship matter.

What does it mean to trust absolutely in the Father’s Providence?  As in the readings, it can make an economic demand on us.  Inflation has socked us all.  Yet Abp. Geraghty is asking the Catholics of Newark to support the American bishops’ Campaign for Human Development and the Catholic University of America in special collections.  Don Bosco counts on your support.  Catholic Relief Services are trying to get food and medicine to Cambodian refugees in Thailand.  How much do you and I trust that God will provide for us?

Faith makes demands on our minds.  To believe in the teachings of Christ, and to practice them, is never easy.  We always try to rationalize our conduct.  What the Church, speaking in Christ’s name, asks of us, doesn’t appear to make sense.  In this week’s issue of Time, one sarcastic penman writes in, “For his stand on contraception, divorce and the ordination of women, I nominate Pope John Paul II for Man of the Year … the year 1579.”[1]   Whether we speak of these issues or others, whether we consider doctrine or morality, the issue is, Whom do you trust?  Who is faithful, God or man?

Faith makes demands on our hearts.  The Gospel proclaims God’s love for us, for each single one of us.  It proclaims the forgiveness of our sins.  Do we believe it?  Do we believe that, once we have accepted God’s invitation to repentance, all is forgiven and forgotten?  Do we believe that God loves us deeply and intimately—so much so “that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16), so much so that Jesus lives on with us in the Church, healing, forgiving, preaching, communicating himself to us?  Believing it, do we accept his healing love; after all, our sins are our very own.  Can we let go of what is surely ours and have nothing left to hang onto except love?

Faith finally makes demands on my whole person.  The moment is approaching, maybe slowly, maybe quickly, when I must stand alone and take the final, blind leap, the leap into the unknown, the leap across the threshold of death.  Do I trust that the leap is into the warm embrace of a Father, to whom, like Jesus, I can commend my whole person?  Or am I terrified, defiant, unwilling, untrusting, afraid of the dark, the cold, the nothingness that threaten?  Only faith can tell me that Christ is the light of the world, the light shining in the darkness that the darkness, the cold, and the nothingness cannot extinguish (John 1:5).

In economics, mind, heart, our whole person, we are really rather poor and skimpy, aren’t we?  But poverty can be our salvation, for it leaves us no one to rely on except the One who cannot fail us.  “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put more than all these….  For she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living” (Mark 12:43-44).

May the Lord enliven your faith, fill you with hope, consume you with his love.

---

[1] Nov. 5, 1979, p. 4.