How much is the kingdom of heaven worth?

THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – YEAR B

 

Introduction

 

The Bible frequently exhorts us to give alms: “Give to the hungry some of your food, and to the naked some of your clothing. Whatever you have left over, give away as alms; and do not let your eye begrudge the alms that you give” (Tb 4:16).

If there is a price to pay to enter the kingdom of heaven, what is it? Will it be enough to give something in alms? In one of his famous homilies (Homily in Ev., 5,1-3), Pope Gregory the Great (590-614) addresses this issue and responds: ‘The kingdom of God has no price; it is worth everything one possesses;’ he then illustrates his statement with some examples taken from the Gospel.

In the case of Zacchaeus, entry into the kingdom of heaven was paid for with half of the goods he possessed because the other half was used to pay back the fourfold to those he had defrauded (Lk 19:8). In the case of Peter and Andrew, the kingdom of heaven was worth the nets and the boat because the two brothers had nothing else (Mt 4:20). The widow bought it for much less: only two coins (Lk 21:2). Someone even went in offering only a glass of fresh water (Mt 10:42).

The price to be paid is easy to establish: the kingdom of God is worth everything one possesses, no matter how little or much.

 

• To internalize the message, we will repeat:

“The kingdom of God is a treasure that has no price;

to obtain it, one must give everything.”

 

First Reading: 1 Kings 17:10-16

The Canaanites, in whose land the Israelites had settled, worshipped Baal, the lord of rain, fertility, and fecundity. His mythical seat was Mount Safon that, with its summit always wrapped in grayish clouds, stands out in the sky of Ugarit; his weapons were the thunderbolts and winds that unleash hurricanes that crash the cedars of Lebanon, shake the forests, and make the Hermon tremble (Ps 29:5).

The thread running through all the Old Testament books is the struggle of the Lord, the jealous God of the Israelites, against Baal, the champion of cosmic order worshipped by all the peoples of the ancient Middle East. At the time of the prophet Elijah, Israel, seduced by the queen Jezebel, had failed the faith of her fathers and had bowed her knees to Baal, convinced that from him she would have obtained abundant rains and copious harvests. Here instead, according to the promise made by the prophet Elijah, three years of drought, famine, and pestilence. As always happens, the idol had seduced and punctually disappointed.

Faced with the absence of rain and the consequent calamities, King Ahab summoned his seers and charged them to identify those responsible. There was no need for divination practices; the culprit was immediately identified: “It was Elijah, the Lord’s prophet—the court soothsayers assured—who provoked Baal’s anger.” Ahab ordered him to be tracked down and put to death.

At this point in Elijah’s story, the episode narrated in today’s reading should be inserted. To escape the wrath of the king, the prophet fled. He headed for the coast of Phoenicia and arrived at Sarepta, a city located a dozen kilometers south of Sidon, renowned for its production of purple. At the town gate, he met a poor widow gathering wood to cook, for her son and herself, the last handful of flour she had left.

Sensing her desperate plight, Elijah did not dare to ask her for anything more than a bit of water, but as the woman walked away, he begged her, “Please, bring along a crust of bread.” He knew that was all she had, but he dared to ask her and added, “For the Lord, the God of Israel, says: The jar of flour shall not go empty, nor the jug of oil run dry, until the day when the Lord sends rain upon the earth” (v. 14). The widow trusted the prophet, offered him what was asked of her, and God blessed her generosity; he granted her and her son food throughout the drought. The sympathy of the Lord and the sacred author for this poor and unprotected woman shines through in this moving account.

Among all ancient peoples, wealth, success, and well-being were considered blessings of the gods, but in Israel, it was soon understood that the Lord turned his loving gaze on the weakest, on foreigners, on orphans and widows. These people, having nothing and no one to count on, trusting in God and, in their poverty, were able to offer not only part of what they owned, not only the extra, but everything, even what was indispensable for their lives.

The widow of Sarepta, a pagan who did not yet worship the Lord but knew him only as “the God of Elijah,” behaved like a true Israelite. She belonged, without realizing it, to the “humble and poor people who trust in the name of the Lord” (Zeph 3:12); she fulfilled the ideal of the pious Israelite whom the psalmists proclaim blessed: “Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the stalwart one who takes refuge in him. Fear the Lord, you his holy ones; nothing is lacking to those who fear him. The rich grow poor and go hungry, but those who seek the Lordlack no good thing” (Ps 34:9-11).

 

Second Reading: Hebrews 9:24-28

Today we continue to speak quietly of priests to indicate presbyters, to refer to the ministers of the Eucharist and reconciliation. Still, the Council had the modesty not to do so: it reserved the term priest, as does the entire New Testament, to Christ and the people of God, united with Christ in the offering of spiritual sacrifices pleasing to the Father.

Today’s passage points to two reasons why Jesus is the only true priest. The ancient priests offered their burnt offerings in a material temple, made of stones, while Jesus ministers in heaven, in a sanctuary not built by human hands (v. 24).

Next, the priesthood of the Old Covenant had as its goal the purification of the people from their sins. To wipe away their sins, the high priest would enter the most sacred part of the temple each year and pour out there the blood of animals. He repeated the same rite each year, which was never adequate, never achieving remission of sin. People continued to be evil and in need of atonement.

On the other hand, Jesus offered a single and perfect sacrifice; he did not shed the blood of animals but gave his blood, and by his act of love, he conquered sin forever (vv. 25-27). When he appears again, he will not come to repeat a sacrifice but to take with him the people whom his unique sacrifice has freed from all sin.

 

Gospel: Mark 12:38-44

The most serious dangers are well hidden and better disguised, those that take us by surprise and unprepared. If Jesus advises the disciples, in a heartfelt way, to be careful, to be on guard against a certain kind of people, it means that the pitfalls they tend are extremely serious. After a series of disputes with Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians in Jerusalem’s temple, Jesus makes a direct, courageous, and precise attack against the scribes, and to make it more incisive, he uses satire, irony, and a language that appears all too provocative. This reveals how worried he was that a particular nefarious behavior could infiltrate even the community of his disciples.

The scribes were initially the ones in charge of drafting documents of all kinds, but, after the exile in Babylon, they had become the official interpreters of the law of the Lord (Esd 7:11), they constituted the authority in the legislative field, they were the judges in charge of pronouncing sentences in the courts. Their profession was legitimate, yet Jesus had cause to complain about their behavior.

The first accusation he made against them concerning vanity, ostentation (vv. 38-39). They loved to show off their knowledge and their titles and draw attention to themselves, not to be confused with the people; with the ignorant, they were careful not to dress like others. They wore a uniform; they “loved to walk about in long robes” (v. 38).

It was out of respect for their dress that people treated them with a thousand regards, gave them their way in the streets, reserved first places in the squares and synagogues, and at the marketplace served them better and earlier than others. They could not be greeted with a simple ‘shalom;’ they demanded bows, kisses, and a religious silence every time they opened their mouths, even if only to breathe. When they did not receive these attentions of deference, they were indignant.

The Master considered this a ridiculous comedy and could not stand it; he was allergic to their uniforms. The Latin etymology derives from the verb ‘dividere,‘ divide, separate, create caste.

More than a sin, theirs was a disease, a pathology that could have been easily cured. What fed the vanity of the scribes was the naive servility of the people who, by paying them honors and obeisance, were convinced that they were giving glory to God. To bring them back into the ranks and make them taste the joy of feeling like brothers, it would have been enough for all of them to behave like Jesus, who had no particular regard for them. Jesus preferred the friendship of sinners and outcasts to theirs; he did not resort to their recommendations; he did not ask for their support.

In the face of such clear words and behavior of the Master, one wonders how it can happen that in the Church, at times we still do not realize how anti-Gospel is the race for first places, honorary titles, and the search for applause and privileges. The world structured in a pyramidal hierarchy has been definitively condemned by Christ. To restore it is not a venial sin but a frontal attack against evangelical logic.

There is a more serious sin that Jesus imputes to the rabbis: “They devour the houses of widows” (v. 40). Widows, along with orphans and foreigners, were the people God had placed under his protection (Ps 146:9). Woe to them, woe to them, woe to commit injustice against them. The Lord had established: “You shall not oppress or afflict a resident alien. You shall not wrong any widow or orphan. If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me, I will surely listen to their cry” (Ex 22:20-26).

Jesus accuses the scribes of “devouring the widows’ houses.” They probably took advantage of the naivety of these simple and defenseless women to get their alms, or they demanded exorbitant fees to plead their cases in court.

The exploitation of the weakest people is the principle on which our competitive and quarrelsome world is based. From this principle, the clever society is born, which is the opposite of the evangelical community. However, even the poor, when they yearn to occupy the place of those who oppress them, do not dream of a new world; they only aspire to perpetuate the old. They do not want to put an end to the mentality of the ‘scribes,’ but to substitute themselves for the ‘scribes;’ they desire the exchange of parts, while Jesus wants the play that has always been performed in the world to be thrown in the dustbin.

The third accusation is even more severe: “They pretend to make long prayers” (v. 40). They are not only exploiters of the weak, but they play a comedy: they perform impeccable religious practices, they show great piety to convince everyone that the Lord is also on their side. Judging them, contradicting them, not submitting to their will, not giving them the honors they demand means siding against God.

Sincere and straightforward people cannot stand this hypocritical religion, and at a certain point, they get tired and may even abandon the faith. Who is to blame for these defections?

In contrast to the scribes, the people who dominate society, in the second part of the passage (vv. 41-44), a model of authentic religiosity is introduced: a poor widow.

This is not the first time in Mark’s Gospel that women appear to whom Jesus looks with sympathy and admiration. He had already met the woman who, suffering from bleeding, had approached him to touch the hem of his cloak and had recognized her faith: “Daughter, your faith has saved you” (Mk 5:34); he had even been amazed at the faith of the Syrian Phoenician, who had declared herself satisfied with the crumbs that fell from under the table set for her children. Moved, Jesus exclaimed, “Woman, how great is your faith” (Mt 15:28; Mk 7:24-30).

These first two women were models of faith; models of total generosity were the widow of today’s Gospel and the one who, a few days later, would anoint his head “with an alabaster jar of perfumed oil, costly genuine spikenard” (Mk 14:3). They are four exemplary figures chosen by Mark to show how women, considered by all to be the last, were instead the first (Mk 10:31). They illustrate by their lives what a true disciple must be like.

The first characteristic is highlighted today by the behavior of the widow who, unlike the rabbis who flaunted their religiosity, performs her gesture without calling anyone’s attention, without being noticed.

This woman did not know Jesus, did not listen to his teachings, did not respond to his call, and is not his disciple. She did not follow him, as did the Twelve and many other women who accompanied him during the three years of his public life (Lk 8:1-3). Yet, she behaves in an evangelical way, as Jesus recommended: “When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret” (Mt 6:2-4). This widow is the image of those who, even today, although they have never read a page of the Gospel, docile to the impulses of the Spirit, live in an evangelical way.

The second characteristic of true love is to be total. Love for God must involve the whole person: “You shall love the Lord your God,” Jesus enjoined, “with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mk 12:30), and love for one’s neighbor must be unreserved.

The widow is presented as a model of this love. Unlike the rich who “threw into the treasury many coins,” she does not put much; she throws everything she has, indeed, as the Greek text specifies, “in her poverty she threw her whole life into it” (v. 44).

The disciple is not the one who puts a part of himself or what he has at stake but sells everything he has to give it to the poor and offers his whole life as the Master did. Like the widow in today’s Gospel, even those who are poor are called to give everything. No one is so poor that he does not have something to offer and no one so rich that he does not need to receive from others. God has filled his children with gifts so that, following the example of the Father in heaven, they may not keep them for themselves but make them available to others.

Through the totality of her love, the widow thus becomes not only the image of the true disciple but also of God and Jesus Christ who, as Paul points out, “he became poor although he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9).

The place of the greatest revelation of God’s face is Calvary. It is there that God has shown his identity. He does not pretend; he offers; he gives all of himself to us. He does not want people to prostrate themselves before him, but he wants them to kneel before their brothers and sisters. He does not ask that they give their lives to him but that, with him, they make them available to their brothers and sisters.

The widow is the image of God and Christ because she stripped herself of everything she owned and made a gift of it to others.