Giving God our Poverty

This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable.  It has not been verified by the author. 

I don’t know why I always feel self-conscious when the Lord tells people to be aware of those who go around in long robes. This is an important week for our country. We have a new president elect, who says he wants to make America great again, and we know that for America to be truly great, it has to be good, morally, spiritually, good. And the only way to be good is to be God’s. And so we can understand Maga as Make America God’s Again, a country that trusts in, a country that is truly one nation under God, and a country that truly trust in God, in God we trust. And so this is a very challenging time for our country, and it’s politicians by themselves can’t change our country the way it needs to be changed, that can only be God. And so I see what’s going on in our country as part of this great battle of what the Lord has called the reconquest, a spiritual reconquest, and that’s not the work, first of all, of politicians. It’s first of all, the work of those who follow Jesus, all who follow Jesus. And so this is a special time, a time, what’s going on in our country is part of this great battle that we’re in. So our Gospel today, our Lord says, “Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury.” So this widow could have said, I don’t have anything to give. You know, what I have to give is basically, practically nothing.  So it’s not it’s not even worth giving. It’s even maybe embarrassing to have to go and give so little. But notice what Jesus says. He doesn’t just say that “well, she couldn’t give very much, but she gave what she had.” What He says is “she gave more than all the others.” So more what? Because she certainly didn’t give more money. So more, what did she give? And so He’s not measuring it by the quantity of money, but by how much it cost her. He says, “For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.” So she didn’t give more money, but she gave more sacrifice, she gave more generosity. She gave more love. And what the Lord knows that the temple, that is His people need more than money, much more than money, is sacrifice and love, generosity and love. And so what God wants from us is that sacrifice, which is love, an act of love. And so this is very encouraging for our spiritual life, especially if we feel spiritually poor. Because we would like to, as we try to follow our Lord, to feel like we’re getting better and better, stronger and stronger, holier and holier. But oftentimes what we experience is we feel poorer because we begin to sense our own weakness, our own struggles, how even if we want to do good, as St Paul says, we often end up failing. And so we can read the lives of the great saints, and we can feel kind of discouraged because we see how extraordinary they were. We read about how intense and rich their spiritual life was, and all their mystical experiences and the miracles they worked, and the extraordinary sacrifices and sufferings that they went through, and we thought, wow, I’m nowhere, nowhere near that. One thing is, it’s always good to remember when you read the lives of the Saints is they’re always filtered. We don’t know all that the saints are really going through. So one famous example is Mother Teresa. Nobody had it. I mean, she was getting, you know, for years and years, she was getting a lot of attention, a lot, a lot of media and interest in her, but there was a whole side to her that nobody knew about until she died. And letters, her letters, her private letters to her spiritual director, which she had wanted to be burned, which were not meant – she didn’t want those to be published – but her spiritual directors felt that they should be. But they revealed that the great poverty that she was experiencing, how dry, how arid, how barren her own spiritual life for years and years and years. And so that’s important to remember that there might be a whole side to the saints, and perhaps a lot of their struggles that we’re not even aware of. Only God knows the graces that each person has received. So some saints may have received very special graces, and that’s what permitted them to do that. So one thing that this gospel shows is that only God can judge. Just like God’s judgment on what this widow was giving was very different from what practically anyone else would have done. So God’s judgment, God, who sees the truth sees things so differently than we do. And so what this means is that what we can give, which might seem very miserable to us, might be very valuable in God’s eyes, because only He knows what certain acts, what certain sacrifices might cost us. I mean, just think, for instance, even like physically, if there’s a young, healthy athlete, running a marathon might be a joy for him, that’s not a big deal, he enjoys it. But if a person is elderly or sick or injured, sometimes, just getting out of bed might be heroic. If a person is worn out, something that is very easy for others to do, can be an extreme sacrifice. For some people, just not taking their life, just accepting to live another day can be heroic, and so we shouldn’t compare ourselves to others, nor should we judge others. And so what this gospel is showing us is that the people that might feel the most limited, like what they can offer is worthless, might actually be giving the most, what is most necessary for our world. And so when we experience our own spiritual poverty, that can be very encouraging. When we’re going through difficult trials, feeling weak, worn out, discouraged, useless. And I want to give an example, and this is from Maria Val Torta, and a lot of you have heard us talk often about her, because she received revelations about the life of Jesus. And so this is a passage from Jesus, right as He’s entering His passion. And He says, “the more the hour of expiation approached, the more I felt the Father move away.” So that as Jesus was approaching His passion, His senses like the experience of His Father’s presence was diminishing. It wasn’t that God was any less His Father, but He was experiencing it less. “The more I was separated from the Father, the less My humanity felt it was supported by the divinity of God. And because of that, I suffered in every possible way the separation from God.” So this is speaking about what becomes most, most intense when in Jesus agony, and when on the cross, when He says,” My God, my God. Why have you abandoned Me?” But it’s saying that that was already beginning earlier on. “The separation from God brings fear. Attachment to life, anger, tiredness, boredom, the deeper it is, the stronger are its consequences. When it is total, it leads to despair. The more he who, by God’s decree, experiences it without having deserved it.” So He says, without having deserved it, notice that Jesus is not experiencing a sense of abandonment by God because He had sinned and had that something that had deserved it, but He was experiencing it because God was asking Him through experiencing it. So it wasn’t because of His sinfulness, but it was precisely because of His holiness that He was experiencing this. And so that’s a paradox. It was precisely because of His closeness and union to God that He was experiencing the absence of God. I’ll say that again, it was precisely because of His closeness to God that He was experiencing an absence of God, feeling abandoned by God. And I say that because like Mother Teresa, again, is another example of a person experiencing feeling abandoned, maybe even rejected, by God. And I say that because so that we, if we experience some of that, we don’t think that it’s necessarily because we’ve done something wrong. It might be, on the contrary, because God is asking us as friends to accept that sacrifice. So He says, “the more He suffers, because the living spirit feels being cut off from God as live flesh feels being cut off, having a limb cut off. It is a sorrowful, prostrating stupor that one who has not experienced it cannot understand. I experienced it.” And so again, this is important whether we’re experiencing ourselves or whether someone else is experiencing because we don’t know all that other people can be suffering. “I experienced it. I had to know everything in order to be able to plead with the Father for everything in your favor, even for your despair. I experienced what it means to say, I am alone. Everybody has betrayed and abandoned Me, even the Father, even God no longer assist Me, and that is why I work mysterious wonders of grace in poor hearts, overwhelmed by despair. And I ask my beloved ones to drink the cup of so bitter an experience.” So just as the Father asked His beloved son to experience this, Jesus says, I asked my beloved ones to drink the cup of so bitter an experience, “so that they, those who are shipwrecked in the sea of despair, may not decline to accept the cross that I offer as anchor and salvation, but that they may grasp at it and I may take them to the Blessed shore, where only peace reigns.” So He’s saying that the cross is His great anchor, that He offers, especially to those who are experiencing abandonment and despair. And so when we are feeling this poverty and even this abandonment and feeling our own emptiness like we have nothing to give, this can be the moment that we give what is most valuable, the struggle to continue to believe, to hang on to hope. The reading we had today from Hebrews said, “Christ will appear a second time to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him.” And I think that’s what He’s wanted our little mission to be, a mission that is eagerly waiting for Him. And so in conclusion, we hear His words again. “I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury.” And with our Blessed Mother right now, we, if you want, you could close your eyes and use this offertory that we’ll have in a few moments, as an opportunity to offer to God our poverty, our littleness, our weakness, our struggles, our misery, our discouragement. And maybe even our despair. Amen.

KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
Mark 12:33-44
Hebrews 9:24-28