In today’s first reading and Gospel, generosity to God with our material possessions is emphasized. The first reading tells the story of Elijah and the widow at Zarephath. Elijah asks her for water in the midst of a famine. As she turns to get it, he then asks her to bring him bread as well. It is at this point she informs Elijah that she was just going to bake her last bit of bread, and it would all be gone. She and her son would then starve to death. Elijah assures her that if she feeds him first, God will not allow for her oil and flour to run out until the famine is over. She complies and consequently, God supports her and her son for the next year.
In the Gospel, Jesus is watching people make tithes to the Temple Treasury in Jerusalem. He noticed that the rich put in large amounts of money, but He also noticed that a poor widow put in her last two coins. Jesus pulls his disciples aside and praises her, saying that she has put more in than anyone else because she gave all, and not just from her surplus.
These scriptures were put together for a very distinct purpose: to show the proper role of money/possessions in our lives. Jesus and the scriptures are clear: Give to God first, and He will take care of you. Or as the Sermon on the Mount tells us, Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be given to you. Whether it be the sacrifice of Cain and Abel all the way down to Ananias and Sapphira, the Bible relates the importance of giving our first fruits to God, because it is only because of Him that we have anything. The proper disposition of the soul is to give our money and possessions to God and our neighbors who need it, not to spend them prodigally or hoard them for a false sense of security.
This can be very difficult for us who live in a wealthy first world society. Our entire economic system is dependent on amassing goods/money. While this system was initially meant for all to achieve prosperity at the beginning of our country’s inception, greed has allowed a select few to make money their god, manipulate the system, and become extremely wealthy while many struggle to make ends meet. The problem is that we as individual Catholics have accepted this system as the status quo. We trust money/possession as our means of security and not God, or we only believe that God is providing for us if our physical needs are met to our comfort level. Consequently, as long as our needs are met, we have turned a blind eye to the needs of the Church and our neighbors around us. Thus, we have seen a decline in tithing, charitable giving, and trust in God in the recent centuries. Catholics have to move away from this system of greed if we want to change the world. We as Catholics need to take Jesus at His word and example, to give everything back to God.
What does this look like? If we look critically at the first reading, Elijah asks a woman for water in a time where it had not rained in years. If we place ourselves in the mind of the woman, we can imagine that she struggles with this first request as there probably was not much water available. Yet, she quietly gives without protest. It is at this moment that Elijah piles on the other request of bread, and at that point she points out her dire situation to Elijah. This is how God works to increase our trust in Him. He often begins by asking us to do something difficult, and then when we comply, He pushes us a little bit further, and asks for more trust. Even when we protest, He assures us that He will provide, and He does so – sometimes just to the point of our need and sometimes in over abundance. This is what He did for the widow at Zarephath, and this is what the widow in the Gospel exemplifies. She understands the need to give all to God and trust Him with her material possessions. She understands that the spiritual needs are to come before the physical, thus she has acted with greater love to God, and God noticed.
In all of this, we have to remember a critical point: God is watching how we use our money/possessions. In fact, this is what we will be judged on as the parable of the sheeps and the goats tells us. Why? Because what we do with our physical possessions reveals our orientation to God. If we have proper thanksgiving to Him, we tithe knowing that it is He and only He who provides for us. If we have proper love, we provide for our neighbors in their needs because we have learned this love from our God who is constantly attempting to provide for our needs (physical and spiritual). The key is putting our trust in God and no one or nothing else. This is hard, but that is the path of the cross, complete trust in God. And that trust will be rewarded beyond measure even if it is sometimes hard to see in this life.
