The Lord Will Multiply A Million Fold 主會百萬倍增加恩寵

Thirty-Second Ordinary Sunday, Year B
Theme: The Lord Will Multiply A Million Fold 主會百萬倍增加恩寵

There were different types of widows in the Old Testament. Thus, we must understand their stories together with their backgrounds. Unlike many other societies in which superstitious people thought that somehow, widows caused the death of their husbands and thus widows were accursed and the general public had better avoided them, the fates of Jewish widows depended very much on their fertility or whether they had children. It was because with a male child, the relatives of the deceased husband had to take care of the child and thus the widow mother. There was also a custom of Levirate marriage in which the brother of a deceased man was obligated to marry his brother’s widow to give birth to a son for the deceased brother in order to continue the lineage of the deceased man. If the widow were not too old to bear children, this would be her second safety net! All these rules were charitable and equivalent to modern day social security measures to take care of the poor and the disadvantaged. In Genesis 38, we find the famous story of the widow Tamar whose father-in-law failed to do her justice through Levirate marriage.

We usually have a wrong impression that widows must be poor like the widow of Zarephath who was collecting a few sticks to prepare the last cake for herself and her son and then waited for starvation (1 Kings 17:12). Not necessarily so! Indeed, in today’s gospel reading, we hear of Jesus’ criticism of the evils of scribes, “They devour the houses of widows …” (Mark 12:40a) In fact, widows could be widows whose deceased husbands were rich! In the Old Testament, there was a beautiful and rich widow called Judith who was able to charm an enemy general Holofernes with her beauty and beheaded him (Judith 13:8), a femme fatale indeed! From the nativity story of Jesus in the gospel of Luke, we know of a widow prophetess Anna who spent more than 63 years in the Temple “worshipped night and day with fasting and prayer” (Luke 2:37b). Somehow, the Temple took care of some widows at least in the early years of Jesus. Time had really changed. Instead of the Temple taking care of widows, like what she had done during the early years of Jesus, some thirty years later, the poor widow was obliged to offer her two brass coins in the Temple treasury! The story of this poor widow has immortalized the concept of poor widows throughout the ages when the Church carries the baton of the Temple to take care of widows. Paul wrote about widows in his epistles to the churches (1 Corinthians 7:8, 1 Timothy 5:5). The Acts recorded the incident of establishing deacons to take care of the distributions of provisions to the poor and the widows within the early Church (Acts 6:1). The stories of poor widows are worth telling because they manifest the mercy of God (Psalms 146:9). Before God, who is not a poor widow?

Twelve years ago, I was elected a deacon candidate. I could not remember the gospel reading of the rite of election because during the whole celebration, the story of the poor widow who offered two brass coins filled my head. I was very much elated because despite all my shortcomings, the Lord accepted my poverty. “For they [the rich] have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood” (Mark 12:44). The Lord does not measure our performance by quantity: namely the amount of money or the length of service etc., but by the quality of our heart: namely our sincerity and loving-care. My 7-day pre-ordination retreat further confirmed this. I wept for seven days for the deeply repressed shortcomings in my soul in contrast to Jesus’ mercy. Wounds were uncovered but there was not sufficient time to nurse and to heal. In the end, the image of Jesus’ Stigmata told me that I had to live with my shortcomings, to carry them forever without healing in order to become a wounded-healer! I learnt that it is the heart that counts, not the quantity. As for the quantity, I have no doubt that the Lord would multiply the widow’s brass coins as He did with the five loaves and two fish. He is more than capable to provide for our needs. Moreover, He would also transform the hearts of the donors like He did with the water in the Cana banquet. If the merciful Lord was able to transform water into wine, would it be impossible for Him to transform the vanity of the wealthy people into genuine piety and charity? Meditate deeper, hadn’t Jesus transformed one of the Boanerges (3:17) into an apostle who always wrote on the topic of love? Had not Jesus transformed the Christians-hunter Saul into the apostle Paul, the Christianity founder? Jesus’ multiplicative and transformative powers inspire great hope in all of us. Meanwhile, we should not despise the insignificant services of the others, and only see the importance of our own contributions because the Lord may multiply the graces of the insignificant services of insignificant people a million-fold!

Some people have a more realistic temperance. They question how the poor widow would survive her days ahead! The kind-hearted and realistic readers worry that when she had no more money, she would be starved to death in the days to come. There was no mention of her child. She might be too old to get married again or if she had a child, it would only be a daughter not counted by the deceased husband’s relatives. Then her burden would be greater! I posed the same question to my legionaries and they told me that the worry was unnecessary. Unlike modern people who lock themselves up in their own flats and rooms without knowing their neighbour, it was not so in ancient times when the community was more closely knitted. People in a village knew each other well. In contrast, it is not uncommon today for people to call the police to break into flats when they smell of the stench of rotting corpse of home alone neighbour next door! In short, the widow’s neighbour would take care of her daily needs and in return, she might do some house chores for her neighbour. That might also account for the source of her two brass coins! Not long afterwards, when the early Church came into existence on the Pentecost, this poor widow might be among the first 3000 converts and started the trend of widow membership, making the Church a more conspicuous sign of God’s mercy on earth! Thus, the Church is on her right path nowadays in upholding the “preferential option for the poor”. “Love for widows and orphans, prisoners, and the sick and needy of every kind is as essential as the ministry of sacraments and preaching of the Gospel” (Pope Benedict XVI, “Deus Caritas Est”, §22, 2005).

Beloved brethren! Representing God on earth, the People of God should take care of widows and orphans until the social services departments of a state are able to take over the mission. Then the Church shall move on to feed the hunger of other disadvantaged. We don’t have to worry about the resources because God will provide (Genesis 22:8) and multiply. Amen.
God bless!

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Picture Credit: reddit.com/r/AncientCoins