Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Within one of her letters, St.Thérèse of Lisieux once wrote, “You cannot be half a saint, you must be a whole saint or no saint at all” (Letter to Abbe Belliere, 21 June 1897). If we are to be a saint, she is saying, we must be a saint by giving our whole lives to God. And this insight from one of the greatest saints of the modern era captures well Christ’s message told long ago in the Gospel. As our Lord sits by the treasury and watches various people put money into the collection, he praises and celebrates the poor widow. Although she only put in two small coins worth only a few cents, Christ Jesus comments that she put in more than all the others because she contributed her whole livelihood. Fascinatingly, in the original Greek of the New Testament, there only exists one word to capture the meaning of both the English words “life” and “livelihood.” Therefore, when Jesus says that the poor widow contributed “her whole livelihood,” we could just as well read that this woman contributed “her whole life.”
In a sense, by giving what little she had, the poor widow demonstrated that she gave her entire life. She knew that, just as was the case for the woman as Zarephath in the first reading, when one gives all for the love of God and neighbor, the jars of one’s life will not go empty and the jugs will not run dry. She showed what God desires of us: A complete gift of our entire lives to love. She recognized the wisdom that one cannot be a half a saint but must be a whole saint or no saint at all.