Homily for Wednesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

2020-08-26

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Jesus seems to be on a roll in His righteous anger toward the Pharisees. Yesterday, He chastised them for their focus on the details of the law as they ignored the values of the Torah. In today’s passage, Jesus points to the importance of our inner reality over the image we portray to others. What matters most, He tells us, is who and what we are in the deepest recesses of our being. Jesus was swollen, bruised, and bleeding while dying on the Cross – a gruesome image – but it was then that...

Jesus seems to be on a roll in His righteous anger toward the Pharisees. Yesterday, He chastised them for their focus on the details of the law as they ignored the values of the Torah.

In today’s passage, Jesus points to the importance of our inner reality over the image we portray to others. What matters most, He tells us, is who and what we are in the deepest recesses of our being.

Jesus was swollen, bruised, and bleeding while dying on the Cross – a gruesome image – but it was then that His love for us was most intensely and powerfully visible.

The widow who put two small coins into the Temple treasury seemed insignificant with her tiny contribution. However, Jesus recognized her generosity of heart; He saw that she was prepared, like Him, to give everything she had.[1]

Indeed, appearances can be deceiving. The scribes and Pharisees had far less substance than their outer image. In the widow in the Temple and the crucified Jesus, there was far more than met the eye. Jesus tells us to be less concerned with how we appear to others than the quality of love in our hearts.

So, let us pray, today and always, that God’s Holy Spirit will kindle in our hearts the fire of His love; that we may be recreated to become the people He created each of us to be in the first place.

[1] Mark 12:41-44

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