To the Band of Brothers: November 9, 2021

Good morning!

Man, what a busy weekend. Starting with the football team winning on Friday night, we had the Model UN team win top delegation at the Vanderbilt conference on Saturday, crew winning the youth regatta at the Head of the Hooch in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the middle school soccer team winning the Catholic Athletic League championship. To top it all off, we also had the gala on Saturday night. Belen was abuzz with all these different events taking place.

Hopefully, in the midst of all this activity, you and your family went to Mass. Sunday’s gospel reading was one of my favorites (I have a lot of favorites). St. Mark (12:38-44) tells the story of the time when Jesus and his disciples were sitting outside the Temple and the Lord noticed something significant. Opposite the treasury where people placed their contributions for the poor, he noticed how many rich people placed large sums of money in the collection box. Then, a poor widow put in two small copper coins worth very little. 

First, it is important to highlight the fact it was a widow who placed the two small coins. In the time of Jesus, being a widow meant a death sentence. After your husband died, unless there was someone who could take care of you, widows were left to fend for themselves. Most women were not able to do that in the time of Jesus. Widows, as well as orphans, were some of the poorest people around. 

Do you remember the story of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17)? In this one, Jesus raises a widow’s son from the dead. The gospel tells us he was moved with compassion to do so. Jesus’s compassion was not so much for the young man, but for the widow who was now left alone and would probably starve to death without her son to take care of her. After Jesus restores him to life, Luke tells us he, “gave him back to his mother” (v.15b).

Understanding this helps better understand why Jesus is also moved by the widow at the treasury. Jesus tells his disciples that what the widow did was a far greater expression of charity than all the wealthy people, simply because her giving hurt more. The rich gave from their excess, the widow gave from her need. Her giving may have been a lesser amount, but it was a greater sacrifice.

When we read about multibillionaires who give a billion dollars for one cause or another, we are impressed. But at the end of the day, how much does it hurt a person who has 20 billion dollars to give away one? They don’t even blink an eye. That person will still eat, travel, cruise on a yacht, drive several cars, and own several houses. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good that they do it. God knows so many people in this world need it. But, more than being impressed by the amount, Jesus calls us to be impressed by the sacrifice.

Reading the gospel at Mass on Sunday reminded me of Francisca. In 2007, I went with a group of Belen students on the Belen Youth Missions to a town called Venú. The distance from our campsite to where we were working on the construction of a bridge was a bit long. Every morning, after breakfast, we would make our way down the dirt road carrying picks and shovels. And, every day, without exception, standing on the side of the road by her dilapidated house, was Francisca. Blind and the single mother of four children, she would have one of her sons walk her out to the road with three bananas she would hand to the group as she said thank you for the bridge.

Mind you, there were 60 of us. Those three bananas couldn’t begin to satisfy the hunger of such a small army of young men. But she was giving us all she had. She was giving where it hurt. It’s like what Mother Teresa once said, “To Almighty God, it’s not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving. Love is not measured by how much we do; love is measured by how much love we put in; how much it is hurting us to love.” To this day, it is one of the most generous contributions I have ever received in my life. And, it was a powerful lesson for the young men of Belen.

Auspice Maria