Today’s Reflection
Gospel: Mk 12: 38-44
June 10, 2023 | Saturday

Today’s Gospel

As he was teaching, Jesus said to them, “Beware of those teachers of the Law, who enjoy walking around in long robes and being greeted in the marketplace, and who like to occupy reserved seats in the synagogues, and the first places at feasts. They even devour the widow’s and the orphan’s goods while making a show of long prayers. How severe a sentence they will receive!”

Jesus sat down opposite the temple treasury, and watched the people dropping money into the treasury box; and many rich people put in large offering. But a poor widow also came and dropped in two small coins.

Then Jesus called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all those who gave offering. For all of them gave from their plenty, but she gave from her poverty, and put in everything she had, her very living.”

Worldly standards usually evaluate actions and performance based on external actions and outcomes. The world wishes to see something material and concrete because that’s what our human condition can easily assess. We have no means to comprehensively pierce through the internal disposition and intention of person. But while we admit this human limitation, it is a relief that we have a God who gauges us not with what we can externally manifest, but with what we do in reference to the disposition of our hearts. In God, no gesture can be faked. He even knows us better than what we know of ourselves, just like how Jesus saw the real sacrifice by the poor widow in today’s gospel who gave all that she had. /Vulnerasti, 2023