(Please read the scripture passage before reading the homily.)
Two small coins are worth more than twenty dollars. Suppose I drive up in my electric car to the sound of trumpets and make my donation of fifty dollars. Further suppose that a widow pushing her homeless shopping cart sneaks in to make her donation of 25 cents. Who has given more? After my “generous” donation, I have 150 dollars left, but she has only 75 cents. I can eat more on 150 dollars than she can with 75 cents.
That is the message of the story of the widow. We measure generosity, not by amount but by proportion. This is the argument by governments for graduated taxation. This is inherently how we judge generosity, although we like the credit for generosity even when we have not been so generous as we ought to have been.
Who is the widow? The widow is the one who gives all she had to live on. In the Gospel stories about widows, the widow can represent God because God has given all God has to us.
God as widow is God who has lost us, his people. We are lost because of sin. We pay no heed to God, who gave us life and rescued us over and over again. God has kept communicating with us through prophets. Part of God’s revelation to us is that God considers us both as his spouse and also as his children. When we do not acknowledge God as our God, we make God a widow, bereft of spouse and children.
Yet, God has given us all he had to live on. It may have seemed like two cents to us, but to God it was all that God had to live on. God has dealt with us, not like a rich person who can make an expensive donation and then forget about us. No, God has dealt with us as a poor widow who gave all she had to live on when she donated two small coins. That is generosity, and with God it is literally true, that God had has given us all that God has and all that God is.
If we have so learned of God, why do we not imitate this generosity of God by giving of ourselves to them? Remember that we judge generosity, not by quantity, but by proportion. If we are not the widow, then we have no praise from Christ.