“It’s not what you are doing, it’s why you’re doing it.” By Alexis Duffy, Fiat Ventures
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Whenever I hear this Sunday’s Gospel from Mark, I have always had a scene play out like a movie. First I see the scribes who are walking around in town with their fancy robes accepting people’s gifts and gratification. I see the people feeling obligated to give to those who already have more than enough. Even when the people don’t have enough for themselves they give all they have. I see these scribes sitting very straight in their seats of honor. They give their long very carefully constructed prayers.
As Christians, we can read that passage and immediately think, “At least we’re not like them!” But we are often more like them than we care to realize. We can base how “Christian” we are on how early we are to Mass, how loudly we sing, how well we say our prayers. Are these things really all we have to do to make us Christian? There has to be more than that. We have to be working toward living Christians lives. We are supposed to use Mass and prayer to help us in our attempt to live out our faith. Projecting this image of Christianity without action puts us in a place where we cannot minister to those around us, we become so concerned with the theatrics of it all that our faith can become shallow and does more harm to us rather than good.
The second part of the Gospel Jesus observes in the temple all of the donations people leave. We see many rich people leave their large sums, but we key in on this poor woman who does not have much. She gives her two small coins. Jesus shows that though on a purely monetary face, the woman did not offer as much as the rich people, but because she had so little to give and gave anyway she gave more than any of them had.
Why? Why is this woman’s donation worth so much? Her two coins were only worth a few cents. No big project was going to come from that. That donation would not have gone very far. It cannot be based on dollar value of her contribution. What was important was her state of mind and reasoning behind her donation. We budget our money and 9 times out of 10 our church donation comes from whatever we have left over. It isn’t a priority to give until we have all that we need first. This is giving for ourselves. We want to feel good, we want to be able to say that we gave to the Church. Giving for others may not always be as easy, it may cause us to truly sacrifice on our end. Jesus sacrificed his life for our salvation, and to truly call ourselves his followers we must be willing to give on that same level, for others not ourselves.