GOD WANTS OUR TOTAL FAITH NOT OUR COIN A homily for the Thirty-Second Sunday, Year B (Mark 12:38–44)

Imagine for a moment a huge stone platform 90 ft high, ten stories or 30 m, stretching all of Ormonde street down to High street to just past Rothe House and from High Street up to a line between the end of De Loughry place and the old Atlantic store on Lower New Street.  All one stone platform, 144,000 sq.meters.  It’s still there in Jerusalem - one huge platform for the Temple and its surrounding plaza.  The most important building, the Temple itself, stood in the middle of one side.  It was about the same size as St Mary’s Cathedral but wider, almost 90 ft. No one ever went in there but the priests.  Along another wall was another building open on one side were people could gather and the other walls had covered walkways.  

The Treasury was in the court of the women, that is, of women Jews.  Apparently there were thirteen wooden boxes with trumpet shaped funnels that rang when coins were dropped in.  Each box collected offerings for different purposes.  Her offering seems to have been a simple gift of two lepta, two small copper coins.  What she gave, all she had to live on as our Lord tells us, was very little.  The denarius was the usual pay for a twelve-hour work day for a labourer.  Those two small coins would equate to only a few minutes work.  In other words the coins were next to worthless, she had nothing to live on.  She was destitute and yet she gave her little away.

This Gospel passage could be used to speak about why and how much we should support the Church and the clergy but that would miss the point.  Those who wonder about what happened to the woman afterwards also miss the point.  Our Lord is pointing to her because she truly believed and truly worshipped. This poor woman could’ve held onto her coins, near worthless though they were, for herself.  There would’ve been nothing wrong in that.  It would’ve been prudent to do so.  Yet her faith was such that she trusted in God’s power to provide for her and to save her and so she gave to help others.  She entrusted herself entirely to God not realising that He was sitting there watching her.  

She is not alone in Scripture.  She stands in a long line of widows and women of faith. There was the widow of Zarephath, again a woman who was not a Jew, who had only a little flour and some oil to feed herself and her child but who listened to the prophet Elijah, trusted in God and God provided for her so that they survived the famine.  There was king David’s great-grandmother Ruth who though not a Jew remained faithful to her mother-in-law and returned to Israel a widow.  Despite her poverty she trusted in God and He provided for her.   God provides for those who entrust themselves to Him and cannot be found wanting in generosity.

The Jewish law commanded that they care for the poor, the widows and the orphans yet this was not done.  In fact the Scriptures tell us that often the externals of the law alone were observed.   The poor and the needy were neglected and the rich took their wealth as a sign of their righteousness, moral worth and superiority.  Things don’t really change do they?  Wealth can easily make us think we are better than those who have nothing.  Real wealth is faith and grace.  Without the grace of God we are indeed poor.

There are times in our lives when our faith is tested. It is easy to believe when times are good and life is easy.  It is much harder when we find the going tough.  It could be the long or serious illness of a loved one, a spouse or a child, or our own suffering.  It could be unemployment, difficult work conditions, relationship difficulties, or any of a long list of troubles that can afflict us. It could be that we are offered an opportunity to sacrifice in order to help someone else. It is at these times that our faith is tested. 

When I say our faith is tested I do not mean that God needs to find out.  God already knows how strong or weak our faith is.  God already knew Abraham’s faith when He asked him to sacrifice his son, his only son Isaac, whom he loved.  Abraham discovered how deep his faith in God was, indeed how deep Isaac’s faith was, when he actually reached for the knife to kill his own son and was only stopped by God’s intervention.  God, in testing Abraham, led him to a deeper faith and trust in God.

Mark in this Gospel passage presents us with a choice.  We can be like the Pharisees who have faith in our own worth, comparing ourselves to others, keeping up with the Joneses, who give only out of our surplus, only what we have to give, and who trust entirely to our own efforts for our salvation or we can be like the poor woman who entrusts herself entirely to God’s mercy and providence.

If we place our whole hope in God’s power to save us and put ourselves entirely in His care God will not be found  wanting.  I am not recommending that you put your entire weekly income into the collection plate or a charity box but that you put your faith in God and not in your own efforts.  Our good deeds must flow from our faith and trust in God, as a response to His goodness and love.  It was such a faith that built this church and our cathedral.  It is such a faith that makes saints.  God does not need our money.  He wants our faith.

TEND THE GARDEN OF YOUR SOUL: a homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent year B

            Before I joined the Capuchins I spent a while as a gardener so I like the image our Lord uses of the seed that dies only to give life.  I'm going to stretch that image and suggest to you that our minds, our hearts and our lives, even our families and our society can be understood as like a garden.  If we care for that garden we will weed it and plant it with wholesome and beautiful things.  It is a lazy and stupid gardener who thinks that he can have a beautiful garden without much effort and time.

            Recent scandals and revelations of the abuse of children remind us that the weeds and thorns of sin, evil, do not go away just because some people get caught and punished or because laws and regulations are tightened.  Laws and regulations are of no help if no one enforces them.  Sin, the doing of evil, remains a possibility for all of us.  The price of peace really is vigilance just as the cost of a beautiful garden is hard work and time.  We change only if we work to change.  Families, institutions, society change only if the people within them work to change themselves.

            When I was growing up we lived in two different places.  We lived in one place until I was ten and then we moved to another area.  In the first place we were friends with another family.  We were always in and out of one another's homes.  Yet I spent very little time in their place.  Usually we were outside and my friend would always usher me out if his grandfather was around.  He didn't like kids around I was told.  The truth was that he was a danger to kids.  We learned many years later that he was abusing his grandchildren and I realised only recently that my friend was protecting me.  Others were not so blessed.

            We can, and should, be vigilant to protect children and vulnerable adults from any kind of abuse.  Let me be clear here.  There never was, nor is there now nor will there ever be a situation or reason that can ever excuse the physical, mental or sexual abuse of a child or vulnerable adult.  Such an evil, such a sin, cries out to heaven for vengeance.  Our Lord Himself said that it would be better for a millstone to be tied around one's neck and that one be thrown into the sea than that one should lead another into evil or harm one of his little ones.  Yet we need vigilance even more over our own selves.

            We cannot do anything seriously wrong without we first think or imagine it.  No one robs, lies or kills without thinking about doing such a thing.   No one suddenly commits adultery just as no one commits rape on the spur of the moment.  People do wrong because they have already become accustomed to thinking about doing wrong.  The person who thinks or imagines evil will eventually do evil.  The person who consistently resists the thought of doing any kind of evil will avoid doing evil and if they instead think of doing good they will do good.  The one who watches images of others doing wrong is pouring fuel on a fire.

            This struggle against our ways of thinking, our habits of the mind, is a kind of dying.  When we try to keep our old habits of thought then we are trying to hold onto this life.  When we seek to put our old habits of thought to death and to bring the new man reborn in Christ into being then we are entering into the battle for our own salvation.  We are cooperating with Christ in our own salvation.  We are tending our interior garden so that it can bloom in Christ.

            This battle is what our Lord means when He tells us to take up our cross and follow Him.  The cross is not primarily some exterior suffering though that suffering can be part of it.  The cross is primarily the suffering we must go through to avoid evil and do good.  It is the suffering we endure whenever we face up to the darker, fallen side of our nature.  It is the suffering of the hard work of changing for the better.

            After I made my final vows as a Capuchin I moved to our house in Raheny, Dublin.  A few months later one of the community there had a stroke and began to slowly deteriorate.  It became necessary to care for him more and more as his needs grew and he became more dependent on us.  There are members of this community that were in Raheny then who leapt to help that man and did great work.  I avoided that job for quite some time but eventually I had to take my turn.  By then he had become doubly incontinent.  Now I can handle my own body's fluids but other people's?  I would prefer to be in the kind of suit worn be those guys handling the nerve agents in England!

            Without any training or preparation I found myself a full-time carer for that old man.  I got him up in the morning, undressed and washed him, dried him, dressed him and brought him down to breakfast where another friar would take over.  I would check in on him during the day, bring him for a walk and change his nappy if necessary.  At the end of the day I put him to bed.  Thank God he was usually like a lamb. 

            That task nearly drove me to leave.  I felt trapped.  I did not want to be doing that job at all though I tried to do it cheerfully.  I only had to do it for a few months.  I do not know how anyone does it for years.  That is heroic.

            Yet in that experience I began to face my self-centredness.  I discovered that I could do what was unpleasant and it did not kill me.  In 'dying to myself' in that small way I discovered that I did not die but rather I grew as a person.  I think now that I got more from that experience than the friar I cared for. 

            The unpleasant tasks, the painful moments in life can be a chance to die to our false selves.  They can be moments of self-awareness when we discover that we do not die but grow towards the person we were made to be.  The unpleasant and difficult task of watching our thinking and struggling to correct it leads to the death only of our false self so that our true self can flourish.  As we replace evil thoughts and images with beautiful thoughts as a gardener replaces weeds with flowers, by God's grace, the garden of our mind flourishes and we bring forth the fruit of good deeds.  As our mind and our heart become like a beautiful garden then God comes to dwell in us.