Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time – November 10, 2024
Many landmarks and much of the infrastructure we take for granted were built by persons enslaved and exploited by unjust systems. I think of the White House, of rail and roadways constructed by enslaved laborers, and of migrant workers harvesting the food I eat. And I’m sure we each know someone who has given their heart and livelihood to a church that does not support and love them back.
Those who sacrifice the most aren’t always the biggest donors. Power and wealth often prevent a person from giving themselves—the self that is everything they are when nothing else is left. But we cannot romanticize the widow’s act of sacrifice, giving all she had to a system that devoured those like her. Theologian Amanda Brobst-Renaud reminds us that “there is a difference between giving everything and having everything taken away.”
In a society where it has become normative, expected, and popular to demonize “them”—whoever they are—can we break the cycle?
Last week, we heard, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” That does not excuse us this week to overlook systems that hinder or take advantage of people’s freedom or agency.
Imitating the widow means, in Sr. Thea Bowman’s words, that “you don’t bring him any feeble service.” To give everything is to bring “all that I am, all that I have, all that I hope to become.”
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