Referring to appearances stemming from pride, shown in the hypocrisy of the scribes, Our Lord exhorts us to be sincerely generous like the poor widow, giving of ourselves entirely for love of Him.
Gospel of the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
38 “And in His teaching He said, ‘Beware of the scribes, who like to go about in long robes, and to have salutations in the market places 39 and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honour at feasts, 40 who devour widows’ houses and for a pretence make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.’
41 “And He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the multitude putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.
42 “And a poor widow came, and put in two copper coins, which make a penny.
43 “And He called His disciples to Him, and said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. 44 For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living’” (Mk 12:38-44).
I – The Joy of Giving
There is a phenomenon in nature that marks all of creation, from the mineral kingdom to the world of angelic beings.
The sun constantly casts its light and warmth over the earth, for the benefit of the beings that depend on its rays. The waters, in their constant movement, evaporate and form clouds which in turn pour themselves out upon the earth, supplying it with the crucial element for life. We find an extraordinary variety and abundance of fish in the seas and rivers that feed men, and, year after year the earth yields its abundant fruits.
We see that nature seeks to give of itself, so to speak. If its different parts could experience happiness, the fruit tree, for example, would be overjoyed to offer its produce to humans; the sea would be glad to provide them with fish; and the sun would delight in continually illuminating and warming the earth and all of its inhabitant. This generosity, manifested throughout the universe, is the fundamental principle of today’s Liturgy: give, give of yourself, and give yourself entirely!
II – Contrast Between Egoism and Generosity
To better understand the Gospel passage that the Church offers this Sunday, we should remember that the Sacred Gospels were not written as a common book, a story to edify pious souls of early Christian times, but, primarily, as a summons to a spiritual summit, to a perfection like that of the Father in Heaven. Moreover, they were written with a polemic intent, due to the obstacles that the first propagators of the Good News had to overcome in their apostolic action. When St. Mark penned his Gospel, one of these hurdles came from men versed in the Law of Moses and in the Scriptures of the Old Testament.
We should also bear in mind that the Evangelist had spent much time in Rome as an assistant to St. Paul and St. Peter, and exegetes concur that he was writing to reach a Roman public. At this time, many Jews lived in the Empire’s capital, and a good number of them were entering Christian ranks. However, both those who remained in the synagogue and new converts (before their conversion was total, which was a difficult process), wanted at all cost to make their customs and the Mosaic Law prevail among Christians, even those coming from paganism. We notice this in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, in which he reproaches the Roman Jews at length for this attitude.
While St. Luke and St. Matthew prove to be less disputatious in this situation, St. Mark argues tirelessly, especially against the scribes who hindered his apostolic action, as is evident by his frequent references to them in his Gospel. 1
Not sparing them deserved criticism, St. Mark places special emphasis on Our Lord’s discussions with them, drawing from them valuable moral lessons for Christians of all times. This is what we contemplate in the first verse of our Gospel.
Warning the multitudes against hypocrisy
38 “And in his teaching He said, ‘Beware of the scribes, who like to go about in long robes, and to have salutations in the market places 39 and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honour at feasts.’”
An important detail is mentioned by the Evangelist in the verse leading up to today’s Gospel: a “great throng” was hearing Jesus. Therefore His teaching was aimed at everyone and was openly given, cautioning the people against the scribes, for the reasons that follow.
According to the customs of the time, people would naturally make a bow whenever a doctor of the Law passed by, and special places were reserved for them at public assemblies. As Father Tuya notes, the public square, or agora, was the commercial and social centre of the city, and the scribes and Pharisees slowly and solemnly passed through this area to receive the people’s greetings. They particularly coveted the title of Rabbi (my Master). “In the assemblies, the seating was determined not only by age, but also by the dignity of the personage; by his wisdom, for example. Since the places appointed by reason of dignity were fewer than those assigned for age, the Pharisees wanted, out of ostentation and vanity, to have the first places in the feasts, to enhance their dignity. […] It was an excessive, infantile and almost pathological craving stemming from vanity and pride.” 2
A superficial reading of the two verses transcribed above could lead to the belief that one should not wear beautiful clothes, greet with courtesy or honour hierarchy in social relationships. The contemporary mentality is, in fact, doing away with dignified and decorous clothing. Ugliness for the sake of ugliness has become ubiquitous, as has egalitarianism for the sake of egalitarianism. There is a general preference for dressing as carelessly as possible and for sitting on the ground. The ugly, the old, the torn and the immoral is now in fashion, while manners are being simplified to an extreme that not even irrational beings would stoop to. This is not what Our Lord wished for His followers.
The problem is not in elegant attire or in honours, but in wishing to call attention to oneself; in aiming to win praise for oneself and not for God. The scribes were fond of the customs Our Lord enumerates—legitimate in themselves in some circumstances—more out of pride than admiration for beautiful things, for the desire to glorify God or for the purpose of edifying one’s neighbour. They sought to glorify themselves, to flaunt their superiority; essentially, to be “adored” and adulated by others, thereby usurping the central place belonging to God. Their display of dignity, their appearance of honour, respectability and wisdom should have corresponded with reality; in other words, the life of these scribes should have made them worthy of these tributes.
Nevertheless, the reality was far from appearances, and Our Lord denounces it.
Appearance, cloak of a sinful reality
40 “who devour widows’ houses and for a pretence make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
Since widows had very little protection in the Old Testament, unethical persons extorted whatever they could from them. It was common to find widows without adult children who had to administer the family fortune themselves. As Our Lord points out, a scribe would insinuate himself into this situation of defencelessness, under the pretext of praying, and plunder her fortune.
In denouncing these types of actions, the Divine Master makes it clear to His listeners how the scribes conveyed externally something contrary to what they were in reality. They knew the intricacies of the Law, without practicing it… In reality, they acted as voracious consumers of others’ fortunes. Furthermore, being legists, they were equipped to handle the juridical processes that accompanied each inheritance case; it was easy for them to eventually appropriate the money.
Therefore, an appearance of virtue cloaked a vampire’s character, whose aim was to unjustly and unscrupulously wrest everything possible from others.
The deadly consequences of pride
This serves us as a warning against the dangers of pride. All vanity—when indulged in as did these scribes—eventually leads to disobedience to God’s Commandments. The essential condition for remaining faithful to the Law is humility; this virtue is the key to the steadfast practice of all the divine precepts.
With the scribes, haughty egoism, aggravated by a duplicitous spirit—the hypocrisy of magnificently representing something that they were not—made them worthy of the “greater condemnation,” according to the forceful expression of the God-Man. This is eternal condemnation in hell, the punishment merited by those who, following the path of pride, immerse themselves in dishonesty and other sins. Let us flee, then, from all vainglory, to keep from breaking the other Commandments of the Law of God. And let us be assured of this truth: pride is always at the root of every grave sin.
Doing good out of ostentation
41 “And He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the multitude putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.”
To the description of the behaviour of the legists, Our Lord juxtaposes the next scene. The Temple had three coffers for depositing alms. “The gazophylacia, or treasuries of the Temple,” Father Tuya tells us, “was located in the women’s court. It was probably divided into several chambers in which the riches were kept. At the front, according to the Mishna, there were three trumpet shaped trap-doors, with very large outer openings, where offerings were deposited.” 3
In that small-scale society—in contrast with the anonymous conglomerations of large modern cities—everyone knew everyone else and therefore anyone who gave alms attracted considerable attention.
Also, there was no paper money at that time, but only coins stamped in noble metals such as gold and silver, or in metals of lesser value. Thus, these coffers facilitated the tendency for ostentation. Possessors of great fortunes could easily pour large quantities of coins into them, in a pretentious and noisy manner, grandstanding their supposed generosity before onlookers. As Our Lord denounced on another occasion (cf. Mt 6:2), the gesture of these hypocrites was often preceded by the sounding of trumpets, proclaiming the alms to be given. After this was done, a new trumpet call signified the departure of the donor, who withdrew steeped in glory, the object of the admiration of those present, who murmured their praises… doubtless conjecturing on the sum deposited in the coffer.
Seated in the Temple “opposite the treasury,” the Divine Master silently observed this scene so familiar to those acquainted with the place.
A disproportionate contrast
42 “And a poor widow came, and put in two copper coins, which make a penny.”
It is important to emphasize the difference between the two attitudes. We can imagine a widow of advanced age, with a shuffling gait, bent by the weight of her years. According to Father Tuya, she threw in two “leptos”, the equivalent of one sixteenth of a denarius, in other words, an insignificant sum, for “the denarius was considered the daily wage of a worker.” 4
Compared to the ostentatious clatter of coins falling from the hands of the rich, the faint jingle of the poor woman’s two small coins was as nothing. It probably made little impression upon the bystanders, who were only concerned with calculating the approximate value of the alms being deposited. As we see later, she had nothing more to offer, perhaps because her former wealth had been consumed by a plunderer, along the lines just denounced by Jesus.
Our Lord breaks the silence to draw a salutary lesson from this scene.
True generosity
43 “And He called His disciples to Him, and said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. 44 For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living.’”
The Master’s first words must have caused a stir. How could the poor widow have given “more than all those,” considering the large quantities of gold coins that they had poured into the treasury and the two paltry coins that she had deposited?
To clarify His teaching, Jesus explains: the widow put everything she had into the coffer, “her whole living,” while the rich people gave from their abundance. In making this comparison, Christ does not intend to condemn the rich, but to praise that woman for having kept nothing for herself. In fact, when a rich person gives up all of his goods, he gives more than one who does the same, possessing but little. This was the case, for example, of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, members of a wealthy family of Israel, who gave themselves entirely to Our Lord.
This widow gave everything, placing herself in God’s hands. It is very likely that Jesus Himself helped her by granting her the grace to do this. Unbeknownst to her, He endowed the poor woman with a good superior to any other: the glory of being praised by the Word Incarnate. Within Our Lord’s benevolence toward her was predestination for eternal glory.
On the other extreme were the scribes who “devour widows’ houses and for a pretence make long prayers,” for which they “will receive the greater condemnation” (Mk 12:40).
God knows the heart’s intentions
In these verses, Our Lord contrasts the episode of the alms with the earlier denunciation of the scribes. In both instances, we see the different characters’ attitudes in their outward expressions, not from deep within. But “the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Sm 16:7). This divine gaze always accompanies us, nothing escapes it. Our life, our actions and our behaviour are judged with absolute precision by God’s gaze, which penetrates into all hearts and profoundly analyses souls, knowing exactly what takes place in each one.
Comparing the scribes’ state of spirit with that of the widow, Jesus wished to clearly demonstrate two opposite realities: that of generosity, and that of egoism and excessive self-love.
The attachment of a rich person, distributed over thousands of coins, is concentrated on just a few coins in the case of a poor person. To renounce these demands a considerable sacrifice, and all the more since they were only two. But this woman offered them generously, placing all her confidence in God. It is the same attitude shown by another widow from the city of Zarephath in Sidon, considered in this Sunday’s first reading (1 Kgs 17:10-16). When she received the Prophet Elijah into her house, she had only a handful of meal and a little oil to make one last morsel of bread for herself and her son. Nevertheless, at the man of God’s request, she agreed to give him her last provisions. For this gesture, the oil and meal multiplied indefinitely in her pantry, until the return of rain upon the earth. This is how God rewards all who give willingly and generously.
The two poles
We should also be as generous with God as He is with us; we must give Him everything! However, this cannot be interpreted as an obligation to rid ourselves of everything we possess and take to living off alms. Only a few people receive this sublime vocation. Rather, it means understanding that all our goods—including our very selves—are God’s property.
Today’s Liturgy offers us a choice between two poles: that of total generosity or that of total egoism. Either we choose one and hate the other, or vice versa. We are either entirely for God, or entirely for ourselves; no one remains at the halfway point.
If our vocation is to the consecrated life, we must be disposed at every moment to give all, not only because of the commitment assumed in a ceremony, but due to the conviction that our life is confiscated by God.
But how can this principle be applied to the life of one called to constitute a family and, therefore, whose duty of state is to provide for them as well as possible? The answer is simple. This “give everything” does not mean literally discarding one’s possessions, but rather being so detached from them that they do not act as anchors that hinder the soul’s flight toward heavenly things. Otherwise, we will eventually fall into the aberration of the scribes denounced by Our Lord in this passage from St. Mark’s Gospel.
III – Perfect Joy in Generosity
The supreme example of giving, giving of oneself and giving oneself entirely, is found in this Sunday’s second reading, taken from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb 9:24-28). The Father had an only-begotten Son, engendered from all eternity, and not created. His love for the Son and the Son’s love for Him is so intense that a Third Person proceeds from them, who is the Holy Spirit.
Despite this profound love, the Father gave up His Son to redeem human nature, lost by sin. And the Son whose soul was in beatific vision, and therefore should have become incarnate in a glorious state, suspended this law to take on mortal nature. 5 He wanted to give, give of Himself and give Himself entirely, and, for love of us, He assumed a suffering body, subject to all the difficulties of life on this earth. “He has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Heb 9:26).
This is the divine example, inviting each one of us to give, according to our duties and capabilities, not only from our surplus, but to give all. God created and redeemed us; therefore, we belong to Him. Everything is from Him and must return to Him.
And just as the sun, the water or the trees, were they capable of happiness, would experience it completely through the generous gift of self, we also will find our perfect joy in giving, giving of ourselves and giving ourselves entirely.
Remedy for our miseries and aid against temptations
Those who give of self stifle their egoism in the service of others. Service, whether through giving good example, good counsel, or some other help, makes reparation for our faults, while it distances us from sin. Thus, one way of acquiring strength to confront temptations is to offer the gift of ourselves.
Conversely, those who close themselves within their egoism leave themselves prey to the ever-present moment of temptation, since we only need to exist to be tempted to sin, as St. Peter’s words suggest: “Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour” (1 Pt 5:8).
Let us seek happiness where it can be found
Nothing brings a soul more happiness than to make a return to God of that which belongs to Him. Justice consists in “rendering to each one his right.” 6 Now, if everything that was created and placed within man’s reach comes from God, then man is indebted to God for everything he has received. In loans, which are human agreements, those who lend something expect the return of the good loaned; the borrower is obliged to make return to the owner. If this is so in human relations, we must be mindful that everything we have is nothing more than a loan from God—everything, from our life, to even our capacities and qualities, and all our goods.
In this way we will be free, because only those who are just are truly free, placing in God’s hands everything they received from Him.
It would be a sign of madness for a person who had lost an item in a theatre, to go outside to look for it, alleging that the street is better lit. Yet the modern world does something similar. Because it is immersed in egoism, it runs after happiness where it cannot be found. Proclaiming that liberty consists in giving free reign to passions and evil inclinations, it seek happiness in vice, sin and countless absurdities. Instead of finding happiness people reap frustration, depression and sometimes even disease. In this way, the egoism Our Lord rebukes in today’s Gospel is even punished here on earth, while deserving, moreover of eternal suffering.
True joy lies in virtuous generosity, for in it man entirely fulfils his final end, “to know, serve and love God” in this world, so as “to be raised up to life with Him in Heaven.” 7 ◊
Notes
1 Cf. LAGRANGE, OP, Marie-Joseph. Évangile selon Saint Marc. 5.ed. Paris: J. Gabalda et Fils, 1929, p.328.
2 TUYA, OP, Manuel de. Biblia comentada. Evangelios. Madrid: BAC, 1964, t.V, p.499-500.
3 Idem, p.710.
4 Idem, p.710-711.
5 Cf. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. Summa Theologica. III, q.14, a.1, ad 2.
6 Cf. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. Summa Theologica. II-II, q.58, a.1: “Iussu imuni cuique tribuens”.
7 Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n.67.
