"The poor widow has put in more than all" (Mark 12:43)
I have many questions about the poor widow of today's gospel. We tend to think of Jesus' language about this widow - and about the scribes whom he also again criticizes today - as a generalization, like 'Blessed are the poor'. But what if Jesus' allegation that the scribes are those who 'swallow the property of widows' is actually a moment in which he reveals his knowledge of a particular injustice committed against this very widow who comes to give her last few coins to the temple? After all, Jesus shows often enough that he knows the wicked secrets of his listeners. I like to think of the scribes within earshot of Jesus, wondering if he was actually pointing the finger at them...
Then, in a dramatic counterpoint, we see her arrive in the scene, this poor women wrapped no doubt in a widow's mourning clothes. In my mind's eye, she is actually quite young; there must have been many young widows in Israel, for this was a period where men often died young. And now, this woman, wronged, as we can suppose, by dodgy scribes and lawyers, places her last pennies in the treasury, as the embarrassed passersby hears the resonant clunk of two wretched coins in the box ...
If Jesus's first words in this gospel are not a generalization - if they are in fact a denunciation of some secret injustice against this very widow - then the widow of the gospel is someone akin to Job. Like Job, she has suffered loss and her personal life has been devastated. And, like Job, her final actions are not to curse the God of the universe, but to offer to Him her very last threads of human hope. What, I wonder, am I clinging on to in my life that makes me unable to follow this widow to her appointment with utter poverty? How do I hang on to the coins of material stability, or the immaterial treasures of esteem and human regard?
Whoever she was, this widow is undoubtedly one of the true anawim of the Sacred Scriptures. As the COLW Book of Life explains, the anawim are the 'poor ones' of the gospel, the marginalized and the outcasts. Their greatness is only evident through the lens of eternity. The widow is not dressed in the fancy robes of important people; she has none of the reassuringly ostentatious badges that pious folk like to pin on their models of holiness. She speaks no words of wonder; she moves nobody but Jesus.
Why don't we revere this woman as a great hidden saint of the New Testament? How can we not wonder if she was not herself a follower of Jesus, or perhaps one of those who heard and embraced the gospel after his Ascension? Could she even be - and here I am in a full flight of fancy - could she even be his own mother, a widow of little wealth and even less regard in the eyes of the world? Mary offered her own few coins to God in her fiat. And, in the moment of her Annunciation, she was in essence too great in the eyes of God to come to the notice of important people, preoccupied with checking their credentials against the consensus of other important people.
May we who read the COLW Book of Life see Mary's humble greatness. May we likewise attend to the hidden magnificence of the widow of today's gospel. To taste their humility is to become less blind to the path that Jesus calls us to walk. And, lastly, may we follow both Mary and the widow into the night of God's mystery, away from the judgmental eyes of those who know so much better than we do. Or, as St Teresa of Avila puts it:
Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.
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