Episode Transcript
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In this weeks’ Gospel,
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Jesus spots a widow who gives everything she has
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two small coins, her whole livelihood to the Temple treasury.
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The generosity of that gesture is, frankly, breathtaking.
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But so is something even more amazing,
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the widow’s unwavering and total trust.
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This seems almost ridiculous in a world where grasping
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and taking are very powerful.
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But here is one who has so little and still gives it,
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open hands and open heart,
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regardless of the cost.
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Calling me, us, to generosity and to sacrifice,
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a word almost out of fashion;
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best avoided we can kid ourselves so often
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and we begin to really believe it.
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I used to see tiny wheat seeds in the silo on our farm.
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Inert, silent, doing absolutely nothing,
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or so I thought.
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A single grain or two of wheat won't amount to much.
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But what happens when planted?
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That’s another story,
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scones, bread and pizza even!
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We can make all sorts of excuses about not sharing our gifts,
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nor offering our light,
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saying we need it for ourselves,
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we don’t have enough, on it goes.
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Aren’t we forgetting that if you light one hundred candles from one candle
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the original candle keeps burning brightly,
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it is not diminished, light multiplied many times over.
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But it’s a different sort of economy,
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not of storing up in barns and siloes.
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Returning to the widow in the Gospel,
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Jesus talks about her very modest circumstances
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compared to the rich person.
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Jesus also shines a light on her generosity.
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She gave it all.
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And God saw it and blessed her.
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Like the women in the first reading,
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rather than losing, she gained.
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Having nothing she placed her trust in God
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and received so much more
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than could she have ever have dreamed of.
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What are we going to do where we are planted?
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We don’t do it alone.
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We have the Holy Spirit with us
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and we have the memories and actions of those who have gone before us.
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Offered what may seem to us in our twenty-first century minds
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so little, and yet calling us to move us beyond our very selves in faith.
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A prophet once said
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you give so little when you give of your possessions
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but when you give of yourself,
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allow yourself to be poured out,
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then you truly give.
