You go to the margins not to make a difference,
but so that the widow, orphan and
stranger can make you different.
--Fr. Greg Boyle SJ,
Commencement Address,
Le Moyne College
[In this week’s Gospel,] Jesus praises the widow who gave all her resources to the treasury: “I tell you truly, this poor widow put in more than all the rest; for those others have all made offerings from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole livelihood.” She is a model of detachment for us.
If the spiritual life is essentially about love, and love is the gift of self, then possessions are a problem. This means that the game of filling up the empty ego with the goods of this world is not the way forward; rather, giving one’s life away is the way forward.
Once you let go of the world in a spirit of detachment, once you remove the things of this world from your grasp and see them without distortion, you will really have them. They will appear as they are, as God intended them. They will no longer be objects for your manipulation or possession, but beautiful realities in themselves.
G.K. Chesterton insisted that only when he realized that the things of this world would not make him ultimately happy did he find real joy in them.
--Bishop Robert Barron,
Gospel Reflection,
November 27, 2023
Image source: James Tissot, The Widow’s Mite / Le denier de la veuve (1850), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesson_of_the_widow%27s_mite#/media/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_The_Widow's_Mite_(Le_denier_de_la_veuve)_-_James_Tissot.jpg
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