Irish Pastoral Centre - In our poverty, what do we have?
Posted on Tuesday, November 13, 2012 at 10:13 AM
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A poor widow puts two small coins into the collection plate. Not much of an event, not much of a donation. However, Jesus immediately sees her real identity. Jesus loves her in her poverty and in her radiance.
Though neither materially poor nor widowed, I too am “a poor widow,” as perhaps are you. Like yours, my poverty is hidden from sight: my fears, my self-reproach, my doubts about God. I’m a widow inasmuch as I’m incomplete and insecure, inasmuch as I ache over what and whom I have lost and may now be losing. You, too, are incomplete. Maybe you, too, ache over someone or something you have lost or are now losing.
In my poverty, I want God. I want comfort. In your poverty, what do you want?
Two small coins were “all she had.” In the place where I am poor, what do I actually have? I have my desire to find God and to get past my own smallness; my hope that my messy life can become “a new heaven and a new earth,” that God really can get light out of darkest dark. In my poverty, I can still act, though I am vulnerable. At my poorest, I can give God my trust, though shaky it may be. Perhaps that shaky trust is all God asks of us in order to taste the riches of the Eucharistic banquet.
Living with Christ Nancy Marrocco
