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The Widow’s Poverty Caryll Houselander (+ 1954)
The poverty of Christ is not destitution, though actually Christ was destitute for part of his life, and in every age one or more of the saints have had a true vocation for absolute poverty. Such saints are Saint John the Baptist, Saint Francis of
There was an old man who called at his bank every week and asked to see his money in gold. "I like to see what I have got," he explained. We Christians have "got" Christ's absolute poverty. Although we are allowed to have reasonable comfort ourselves, the grace and power of Christ's real destitution belongs to us. His homelessness, his nakedness, his loneliness, the poverty of the dead man on the cross, all that belongs to us as Christians, and in times of crisis we can draw on it. At all times we can rely on it; without it the gentler poverty would have no value and we should be a spiritually bankrupt race.
The grace of Christ's utter poverty is given to all
the destitute and homeless people in the world, outcasts and refugees; without it, they would despair. Anyone of us at any time now may need to draw on this pure gold of Christ's poverty. From time to time, like the old man, we want to see what we have got.
Those saints who baffle the faithless by leading lives which seem to them to be useless, even selfish, lives like Christ's public life, poorer than the wild foxes and the birds, show us that his poverty is still our wealth, is still triumphant. Even in human nature as it is today, Christ, naked and foolish on the cross, can be king.
Poverty, not destitution, the simpler poverty which many people experience, makes us more sensitive, more selective, able to perceive the poetry in life.
Sunday, November, DAY BY DAY - MAGNIFICAT Missalette |
Monday 9 November 2009
Caryll Houslander The Widow's Poverty
Raymond - Widow's Mite
32nd Sunday of Ordiary Time
Sent: Tue, November 10, 2009
Subject: Widows Mite
Homily of Fr. Raymond
THE WIDOW’S MITE
Jesus generally uses two types of Oral Teaching to get across his message: first there is the direct teaching - of the Beatitudes – for example, and then there is the more indirect, but more picturesque, method of the parables - short imaginative stories to illustrate a point.
There is however one, perhaps solitary, incident of Jesus teaching where he uses neither of these methods. This incident is the story which we call “The Widow’s Mite”. It’s very uniqueness underlines for us the importance of its teaching. Nowhere else in his public ministry do we hear Jesus holding up the example of any living person, not even of his mother, for the admiration and inspiration of his hearers. This, we must remember, is no parable, no little ‘made-up’ story to illustrate a point. No, this was a real life incident which happened before the very eyes of Jesus and his disciples. It was an incident which must have impressed Jesus so much that he spontaneously turned to his disciples and told them that the gift of this poor widow’s two coins, meant more to God than had all the great offerings which they saw the wealthy putting into the treasury.
If we try to analyse her gift logically it seems to make no sense. “It was all she had to live on”, Jesus tell us. Perhaps he didn’t mean that quite literally. It was the kind natural expression anyone would have made. Anyone, knowing her condition and seeing what she did, could easily have said “But that’s all she has to live on!”
However, whether it was literally true or not, the lesson remains the same. Her extravagantly generous faith and love were highly pleasing to God. It is foolish to look for logic here and argue that she should have had a greater sense of responsibility in the use of her little sum. She knew very well she would have to beg for bread on the morrow!
But the logic of the poor widow was one of faith and love which would argue like this: “What kind of security for my future are my two pennies? Precious little! My security lies only in God! It is into his loving hands that I confide them as I confide my future.