The reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, our Second Reading for this Sunday, continues the reflection on the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. To understand the crucifixion more fully, we need to look back deep into Israelite history. The patriarchs of Israel moved to the land of Egypt, where the Israelites became a large and prosperous ethnic group. However, the Egyptian Pharaoh became jealous of their success and decided to enslave them. He then sought to destroy the Israelites by having every male child killed right after birth.
In response to their suffering, God sent Moses to free the Israelites form bondage. Moses sought to prevail upon Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, but Pharaoh would not listen. As a result, God performed 10 signs, also known as the 10 plagues, through Moses in order to persuade Pharaoh to set the captives free. The last of the signs was the angel of death flying over Egypt and striking down the firstborn male in every household. The Israelites themselves could avoid this punishment by each family gathering together to sacrifice and eat a lamb and marking their doorframes with the lamb’s blood. When the angel of death would see the blood upon the doorframe, it would pass over the house without causing harm.
After this 10th sign transpired, Pharaoh finally relented and allowed the Israelites to go free. They escaped quickly, but then Pharaoh changed his mind and decided to pursue them. Soon the Israelites were trapped at the Red Sea, about to be overtaken and slain by the mighty Egyptian army. But God performed another miracle, giving Moses the power to separate the waters. The Israelites could then walk across dry-shod, but the sea closed in on the pursuing Egyptian army.
The Israelites were safe. God had liberated them from the bondage of their slavery. To remember their deliverance, the Israelites were commanded by God to observe the Passover ritual every year. Once a year, every family would gather to sacrifice and eat a lamb together, while reflecting on how God freed their ancestors miraculously.
The Passover meal continued to be celebrated by the Israelites year after year throughout the centuries. The night before his crucifixion, on Holy Thursday, Jesus gathered with the disciples to celebrate the Passover in the manner of all observant Jews. However, this celebration of the Passover would change everything. Jesus took the place of the sacrificial lamb himself. He commanded the disciples to eat his body and drink his blood, which we receive through the Eucharistic bread and wine consecrated through the words of the priest.
On the next day, on Good Friday, Jesus offered himself up as a sacrifice upon the Cross. By doing so, he offered up the sacrifice necessary to wash away all the sins of humanity. The Israelites were freed from the bondage of slavery in Egypt. Their liberation was a foreshadowing of the liberation of the human race. Through the sacrifice of Christ, all of humanity was given the possibility to be freed from the bondage of sin.
The Cross shows us God's boundless self-giving love. God created the world. He brought humanity into existence, giving us life. Then, when we went astray, he came among us, lived among us as a man, and then accepted death upon the Cross. He gave all so that we may have life.
The woman in the Gospel reading for this Sunday responds to God's self-giving love with her own self-giving. She gives all she has to the Temple. Her actions illustrate a fundamental principle of stewardship. Everything we have is from God - our possessions, our own body, our very life. All of it is from God and belongs to God. We are merely stewards, caretakers of the gifts God has given to us. Our task is to discern prayerfully how God wants us to use those gifts. Whatever the case, we are to lead a life that is oriented toward giving of ourselves to God and to the people God has placed in our lives.
Giving can take various forms. In the Church, we use the phrase time, talent, and treasure. We give of our time, of our skills, of our financial resources. All of which is to say that we are to give of ourselves, of who we are, of our very life. Sometimes we might think that to be truly self-giving, we have to think big and must seek to solve the problems of distant lands. While such efforts are important and should not be neglected, our first responsibility is to take care of those whom God has placed in our day-to-day lives - our families, our friends, the members of our community, and our faith community, the Church. Sometimes it is easier to go outside of our everyday lives to help others far way. But we should not seek to take the easy way out, but continue to give of our lives to those closest to us, even as we find ways to think beyond our immediate communities.
At the same time, we must also be careful not to let self-giving become a way of dominating others. I am sure that most of us have had the experience of someone doing something for us or giving us some sort of assistance in a way that was not meant to share God's love with us but to gain power over us, making us feel inferior. Needless to say, such self-giving is a perversion of what God modeled for us and instructed us to do. Our self-giving should always be motivated by selfless love.
Paradoxically, the more selflessly we are able to give of ourselves, the more our lives will be filled with the joy of giving. On the one hand, we should avoid the temptation to give in order to get an emotional high from the experience, because focusing on that high will, in the end, make us codependent, causing us to act selfishly. But on the other hand, the more we give with genuine love, the more we will feel a deep, joyful sense of peace pervade our lives.
In fact, our self-giving to others is a reflection of God's love in our lives. God loves each of us infinitely. As many have said, God would have created the entire world for each of us individually and he would have died upon the Cross for any one of us, even if we had been the only person in the world. God wants us to be channels of his infinite love to each other. As long as we keep God in the center, when we give to each other, we are giving ourselves to God.
God asks us to give him only one thing - everything. Our whole self. Our entire being. By doing so, we receive his gift, all of his infinite love, which passes all human understanding. Let us be like the widow in the Gospel and live a life of complete self-giving to God.
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The readings for the Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B are:
1 Kgs 17:10-16
Ps 146:7, 8-9, 9-10
Heb 9:24-28
Mk 12:38-44 or 12:41-44
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Photo Credit: The Western Wall, the only remaining part of the ancient Temple complex (c) 2016 by Zoltan Abraham.