“Riches, both material and spiritual, can choke you if you do not use them fairly. For not even God can put anything in a heart that is already full.”

"Doing nothing for others is the undoing of one's self. We must be purposely kind and generous, or we miss the best part of existence. The heart that goes out of itself, gets large and full of joy. This is the great secret of the inner life. We do ourselves the most good doing something for others." Horace Mann: (1796 – 1859: was an American educational reformer)

Gospel Text: (LK 21:1-4)

When Jesus looked up he saw some wealthy people
putting their offerings into the treasury
and he noticed a poor widow putting in two small coins.
He said, "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."

We live in a society in which values that are contrary to the Gospel are canonized. A person’s value is measured in economic terms. The poor are shunned as worthless.

God has a different set of values from those of our society. When Jesus saw the wealthy putting large amounts of money into the collection box of the Temple, He was not impressed. It was not as if the wealthy should not have given large sums, but Jesus was looking for something else. He saw that something else in the poor widow who donated only two small coins. He explains to us what He saw: “[The wealthy] have all made offerings from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole livelihood.”

It was the generosity of the widow that mattered, not the money she gave. We are called to be generous people, unselfish in all our relationships with others. God does not value us for giving our money; or, for that matter, for giving our time and talent. God values us for the generosity from which our giving flows. Generosity flows from the love that we receive in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.