32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B - The Widow’s Faith & “Let Us Sing to the Lord”

We must live by the obedience of faith, a faith that shows itself in works of charity and self-giving. That’s the lesson of the two widows in this Sunday’s liturgy.

The widow in the First Reading (1 Kgs. 17:10-16) isn’t even a Jew, yet she trusts in the word of Elijah and the promise of his Lord. Facing sure starvation, she gives all that she has, her last bit of food—feeding the man of God before herself and her family. The widow in the Gospel (Mk. 12:38-44) also gives all that she has, offering her last bit of money to support the work of God’s priests in the Temple. In their self-sacrifice, these widows embody the love that Jesus last week revealed as the heart of the Law and the Gospel. They mirror the Father’s love in giving His only Son, and Christ’s love in sacrificing himself on the Cross.

Again in today’s Epistle (Heb. 9:24-28), we hear Christ described as a new high priest and the suffering servant foretold by Isaiah. On the cross, he made a sacrifice once and for all to take away our sins and bring us to salvation. We are called to imitate this sacrifice of love in our own lives. We will be judged, not by how much we give—for the scribes and the wealthy contributed far more than the widow. Rather, we will be judged by whether our gifts reflect our livelihood, our whole beings, all our heart and soul, mind and strength.

Are we giving all that we can to the Lord—not out of a sense of forced duty, but in a spirit of generosity and love? As we sing in today’s Psalm (Psalm 146), the Lord will provide for us, as He sustains the widow. Let us follow the widows’ examples, doing what God asks, confident that our jars of flour will not grow empty, nor our jugs of oil run dry.

We would like to present our latest video “Let Us Sing to the Lord”, a remarkable psalm set to Exodus 15, assumed to have come spontaneously as Moses led the nation into the wilderness on the other side of the Red Sea. The song was recorded live by the Combined Choirs of St. Francis de Sales Parish (Ajax, ON, Canada) at Easter Vigil 2024.

Video can be watched by clicking here or on the picture below: