We are tempted to consider the value of the widow’s contribution based on strictly economic proportions. An important lesson here is that God does not care how much humans value money. The varying degrees of material wealth do not determine the stature of a man or a woman in the eyes of God. God sees money very differently than we do – we should try to gain God’s perspective on money and on giving so that we may become wise. If the intention of the giver is selfless, that is the true worth as God sees it. One can give a large amount greedily, selfishly, and begrudgingly. This giving is not worth much in God’s eyes. God, as it says in the scripture, “Loves a cheerful giver.” The everything that the widow put into her gift was not two pennies – she could very well have contributed those two pennies saying to herself, “well, it isn’t that much to lose anyway.” God wasn’t even pleased by the fact that this was the last of her material wealth. God is pleased that she disregards the selfish human importance placed on material wealth – He is pleased that she is ready to be dispensed with it for the sake of God and her neighbor.
Saint Boniface, Bishop and Martyr
The Christian makes space in his or her mind and heart for the Word of God. Daily meditating on the Word as we hear it spoken in the Scriptures transforms our mind. In that way, the Word becomes a light for our lives. If we don’t frequent or listen carefully to the Word, it will not have much power to influence us in our daily lives. Virtue is the ability to perform actions “in the light”: on the basis of what we know to be good. Christian virtue is certainly based in part on our human experience: it conforms our choices to what any functioning conscience would know to be right and good. Christian virtue, however, also gives our actions divine weight: beyond the good a clear conscience discerns, the good of heaven revealed by the Scriptures influences our choices and actions.
Thursday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
ORIGEN:
The Savior, too, first granted you this very thing—that you should fall. You were a Gentile. Let the Gentile in you fall. You loved prostitutes. Let the lover of prostitutes in you perish first. You were a sinner. Let the sinner in you fall. Then you can rise again and say, “If we have died with him, we shall also live with him,” and, “If we have been made like him in death, we shall also be like him in resurrection.”
CHRYSOSTOM:
So also you are yourself made king and priest and prophet in the washing of baptism. You are a king by having dashed to earth all the deeds of wickedness and slain your sins. You are a priest in that you offer yourself to God, having sacrificed your body and being yourself slain also, “for if we died with him,” says he, “we shall also live with him.” You are a prophet, knowing what shall be, being inspired of God and sealed.