09 November 2024 – 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) (Sunset Mass)

by Fr Joachim Robert

Dear friends,

In today’s Gospel and our Readings today, it reminds us of two things, one is the aspect of trust and the other is sacrifice. Trust and sacrifice. 

As you know, the world we live in sometimes goes through this crisis of trust. 

If you take a deep look at ourselves and the situation that is around us, we find it difficult for us to trust others around us. And this mistrust or perhaps this crisis of trust in the social areas of our lives and perhaps in our neighbourhood, our family, our friendship, our community. If you take a deeper look at these realities of our human life, we see that we find it difficult to trust.

And on a grander scale, all around the world we see wars here and there. And that too, dear friends, is a manifestation of this crisis of trust that we have in the world because everything is looked with suspicion, everything is looked with fear and judgment.

And we ask ourselves: Can we really, really trust?
Because once trust is broken, it takes a long, long time to heal that relationship.

In the First Reading, we see the widow of Zaraphath who trusted in that Word of God even though she had nothing. She only had one meal and the oil for her son and herself before they die. But Prophet Elijah comes and tells them:
Give me what you have and after giving me, then you eat. 

When you are faced with circumstances of such, dear friends, when you have nothing and even in your nothingness something is demanded of you and you are called to give, it demands courage, it demands sacrifice, it demands a lot of you for you to say ‘Yes’. And very often, I am not sure even for myself, how would I respond to a situation like in the First Reading.

But the invitation of the First Reading is to trust. To trust in that Word of God, to trust in this Prophet of God. And what the woman did is to offer her complete trust and faith in God and she responded with generosity.

And that generosity that she gave was what transformed her life. They were able not only to live for one day but perhaps for the whole year, being able to be nourished in their nothingness.

And if you take a look at the Second Reading of today, from the letter to the Hebrews, here we see Jesus sacrificing Himself for the sake of humanity. He offers Himself as a sacrifice, in complete obedience to the Father’s will in His life. And after offering Himself in complete obedience in spite of His fear, in spite of broken humanity, He became the reservoir of mercy, love and compassion.

And you and I, dear friends, are called to enter into that life of compassion and love, in the way that Jesus expresses Himself in the Second Reading.

And as we move on to the Gospel, we see this trust and this sacrifice in complete contrast.

We find the Scribes and the Pharisees at one hand, and on the other hand the widow, and on the other hand we see Jesus watching what is happening, not outside but inside the temple. And Jesus observed everything that was happening in the temple.

In the same way, dear friends, in this contrast of experiences that we see in today’s Gospel, we can come to realise sometimes we go through these form of it. Push and pull in our own journey of life. And sometimes Jesus becomes the voice of conscience. Jesus becomes the conscience that watches over what we are doing.

And as we take a look again at the Readings, we see that Jesus watches the religious leaders and they were doing all that they did to gain attention, to be noticed and their self-importance was their aim. And what they did was to use this pretext of holiness and to laud it over others.

And what they did was they walked about in long robes, to be greeted obsequiously in the marketplace, to take the front seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets. And this is what they did. All their focus was themselves rather than the other.

But in complete contrast, we see the widow. The widow who in her nothingness offers that two coins to be put into the treasury. She perhaps did not offer much in comparison to the rich people or all the Scribes and Pharisees. But Jesus took notice of her because what was important was the generosity of her heart, to be able to give what she has in complete surrender to this God who takes care of her.

And when she was able to give, in her complete surrender and trust in God’s providence in her life, Jesus takes notice of her and tells it to His disciples, of how they too should look at the people around them.

The religious leaders used their authority to suppress and the Readings say: These are the men who swallowed the property of widows while making show of lengthy prayers.

And here, dear friends, as we look at the Scribes and the Pharisees, as we look at the widow, we find this restlessness or these two ways of engaging with the realities that is around us, in our own hearts, because sometimes we want to be noticed and want to be known.

On the other hand, we do many, many things in the silence without people taking notice of us.

And today, dear friends, this widow in the Gospel and in the First Reading teaches us, teaches us to have this complete surrender and trust in this Word of God and to allow us to trust in God’s providence in our lives.

And very often, dear friends, we trust in our possessions, we trust in our authority, we trust in what we can hold close to our hearts. But today’s invitation in the Gospel invites us to surrender, to surrender in complete trust in this God that loves us and to entrust ourselves into His hands, like the widows.

And the Responsorial Psalm, dear friends, says today:
My soul give praise to the Lord.

And dear friends, as we look at our lives and check whether how have we orientated our lives. And we know sometimes we have fallen short. We have fallen short like the Scribes and the Pharisees and that is not a determining factor of how it is to walk as a disciple.

And sometimes we also do the right things like the widows. And we too have done many, many things right in God’s eyes. In whichever way that we go, dear friends, we need to realise that Jesus looks at the motivations and intentions of our hearts to do the right thing, in complete obedience to His will and His plan.

And as I reflect on so many of you in the Parish, so many of you in the ministries, so many of you who do many, many things silently and in the quiet, like the widow. We praise and thank God for the blessings that you have been towards our community. 

And sometimes when we have been like the Scribes and the Pharisees towards one another, we ask the Lord to transform us, to mould us and shape us so that in and through our generosity towards one another, in the way we reach out to one another, God may be glorified. In the way we reach out in generosity, in compassion and love, may our hearts give praise to the Lord like in the Responsorial Psalm.

And let us pray, dear friends, as we come to this table of the Lord, and as you and I take a look into our own lives, into our own hearts to see where is God present. And we know, dear friends, that Jesus watches us.

And if we have done, we have gone and taken the path of the widow, let us praise and thank God.

And if we have followed the path of the Scribes and Pharisees, let us ask the Lord to transform us, mould us and shape us to more and more walk in the path of discipleship like how Jesus expresses, turns towards His disciples and tells them to look at the widow and follow the path of holiness, the path of truth and the path of love.

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