I see this family every Sunday at Mass. The girl in the family, over seven years old and with intellectual and developmental disabilities, is the person who insists on putting the family’s offering envelope in the collection basket each week. And woe to the parents if they do not bring the envelope to Mass! This family makes their church offerings online, and yet they continue to use their offertory envelopes so that their child can perform this sacred ritual. St. Mark in today's Gospel tells us about the donation of a poor widow that drew the Lord’s attention. The girl I talked about draws the Lord’s attention every Sunday.

Today the Lord proposes to us a poor widow as an example of faith. St. Mark refers to thirteen metal coffers in the Temple of Jerusalem that received donations for various purposes. The donations were made in special metal coins. The rich put many coins in the coffers drawing people’s attention from the loud clanking noise of the coins. In contrast, the widow's offering was small in monetary size and undetectable to most people’s ears.

Perhaps a surprise to many, the Lord's attention was captured by the poor widow. Widows were among the most vulnerable members of Israel’s society. They had no inheritance rights and very limited income. They were dependent on the care and support of others.

Today's Gospel reading is paired with a reading from the first book of Kings in which God sent the prophet Elijah to be fed by a destitute widow during a terrible drought. The story could not be more dramatic. Elijah met the widow when she was about to cook the last meal for herself and her son. With no remaining food, they intended to eat and then wait for the worst. A handful of flour and a drop of oil were all they had left to eat! Elijah invited her not to be afraid. And at God’s instruction, he invited her to feed him first.

To assure her that feeding him was the right thing to do, Elijah delivered her a message from God: “The jar of flour will not be emptied, the cruse of oil will not be exhausted, until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth” (1 Kings 17:14). Despite being a gentile, the widow believed God's Word and obeyed, giving to the Man of God from their last sustenance.

The courage and faith of these two widows from the Holy Scriptures is identical. The two coins that the poor widow from the Gospel donated were the smallest coins in circulation and were the equivalent to a few cents of today! The few cents were all that this widow had to live on.

By telling us that the poor widow placed two small coins, St. Mark hinted that she did not spare even what she could justifiably have kept for herself. The Lord told his disciples that she had given more than all the others. St. Mark did not tell us about the disciples' facial expression, but it must have been astonishment. We can imagine the disciples’ jaws dropping, just as they had when the Lord told them that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle that for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God (Mark 10:25). 

God measures our gifts given to Him in a way that is entirely different from our own measurements. God sees the motivation of our hearts. He looks at whether we give from our abundance or from our poverty. The widow's gift meant that she had to trust God to provide her next meal. The widow's unrestrained generosity is like the self-emptied generosity of God himself, who did not hold back from us even his beloved Son.

These two widows from the Holy Scriptures were fearless, completely trusting in God. Many of us are not often generous enough because we are fearful, fearful of the future. We are afraid that the flour jar will be empty. Many of us doubt God's Word and goodness or we are afraid of what he will ask of us. We doubt his love and power. Let us humbly ask the Lord to make us fearless like these widows and to increase our faith so that we always trust in his infinite love and goodness.