Reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Jesus glanced up and saw the rich people putting their offerings into the treasury. This is in the temple. And then he's also saw a poor widow putting in two copper coins. When, Jesus saw this, he said, I assure you, this poor widow has put in more than all the rest.
They make contributions out of their surplus, but she, from her want, from her need, has given what she could not even afford, every penny she had to live on, and this is the gospel of the lord. Praise be to you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Whenever I read this, I think of a text from one of the psalms, having my marvelous memory. Of course, the number comes like that.
But it's something goes like this. God doesn't need anything from us. He's made the world. He doesn't want your fatted calves and your bullocks. He doesn't want your silver and your gold.
He doesn't need it. He made all this stuff. That's that's exact not exactly the way David said it, but that's the gist of the matter. He made this world. And let me tell you, just as I tried to to to say in my well chosen remarks of yesterday, it's his world.
He made it. And it's not just a coincidence that it's the kind of world it is today with everything. Because everything in this world hangs upon God. It's contingent. The good and what we consider not so good.
God has a hand in all of it, even in sin. Not that sin is imputable with God, but he if we're contingent beings, if our existence depends upon God, and if I commit sin, you can't eliminate God from the picture. You can't escape this problem of evil. That's what I'm talking about. The latest book on the subject by a novelist named Sparks, as she says, the only problem.
The only problem. And no one has complete answer to it. The answer that we have is a sufficient answer, but it's closed in mystery. Now the point is this, this world needs something. It's not a perfect world.
It's a perfect world from the point of view of accomplishing what God wants it to do. That's it. That it sure is perfect from that point of view. But from our point of view, it seems to be full of imperfections. As somebody said, even God admitted he made a mistake in creating Adam.
That's a little something of a metaphor, of course. Now then we come back to the part that we play in this world. Here we have an instance of this matter of charity or giving or whatever yours or or contributing to god's worship. And remember, the also a very important instance from our lord's own life. When our good friend Judas, who was always most careful to preserve the interest of his master, he was a loyal and faithful servant, as you all know.
And he was up until a point. You remember the scene, our blessed lord is is at a banquet. Notice, he was with rich people, with a well off. And there he is at this banquet when a woman comes in with very expensive ointment, and starts putting it on his feet. And good old Judas, who hasn't has some common sense, says, look, this is ridiculous to to waste this perfectly good money because could have taken this and sold it and given it to the poor, and you know how how how we have poor all around us and you know with our desperate need.
We could have done that, and here you're wasting it on his feet. What does our lord say? Shut up. Let the woman alone. Now, we ought to keep these things in mind.
Our blessed lord doesn't need anything I can give him. And as in one of the prefaces we say, the very stimulus that I have to incline me to do something for him is his own urging. I can't do it without him. Christ said, without me, you can do nothing, and that includes me too. We can do nothing without him.
So you see, what I'm driving at may not be so obvious, but it ought to be obvious. Let me give you a practical instance. We had a confirmation service here some days ago. They took a collection up. Somebody objected to taking a collection up at that mass at that mass, which was the focus point of the conferring of confirmation.
They thought it was inappropriate to take a collection of it. Now you see, this is the mentality of the tax collector. Or going to the theater, going down to the Kennedy Center that you pay your you buy a ticket, you walk in. See, this is missing the point entirely, entirely. When we take a collection up, it's simply a way of inviting people to fulfill their duty of returning something to God Almighty.
The best example I ever saw of this was in a high church Episcopalian church. When they this was years ago, long before before we we had had this this procession business and all of that. But they had it, this was about twenty five years ago up in Philadelphia. And they took the when the ushers brought the collection down, here was a huge silver tray right in right at the altar rail there. And they very, with great solemnity, poured out the offerings of the faithful into this big silver platter.
And then that was taken and put not on the altar, but on the altar, of course, was the priest was facing that way, but it was placed in front of the altar on the the della. You see, this solemnity helped helped to give significance to what was being done, to what was being done. When people contribute to the worship of God, or I say the worship of God, it seems a futile thing. How often? I get sick of it.
People coming back from Spain or Central America or South America or from certain other places, they say, look at the waste of money. All that gold's on the oil. They think what they're seeing is gold. Well, it is gold, but remember, it's gold leaf on wood. And if you want something permanent in a salt climate, climate, you can't improve by putting gold leaf on wood.
Keep that in mind. I've tried it, I know. Anyway, they say, look at this place. Here you have abject poverty, and you're wasting your gold on an altar, or figures or all that stuff. Now, I I'm not a you see, when you talk like this, you will say, you you are you lack compassion for the poor.
How about lacking compassion for God Almighty? Christ said in reply to Judas and the ointment, he said, you're going to have the poor with you always. But me, you will not have ointment. Let the woman alone. Let her waste the ointment on my feet.
I said that. After all, the first commandment is not to love your neighbor. The first commandment is not to love yourself. The first commandment is to love god almighty. That's your first commandment.
And with that commandment, that empty word, love has to be given meaning. And one of the meanings of love is service. Service. That you express it in some way or other, and the poor human being does that as best he can with his poor resources, the resources of mind and of heart, of his wealth, or of his poverty. This woman are the who who our lord is talk notice, he's giving an actual instance here.
He praises the woman for being improvident, for being imprudent, for taking the bread out of her own mouth and giving that trifling amount of money to God. Does God need need that money? As the psalmist said, he could fill the world with anything he needs if he wanted to. God didn't need this widow's might as we sometimes call it, but she needed it. She needed it.
We need it. We need to cooperate with all creation in giving joy in giving glory to God Almighty. Now how do you do that? Just to say I give God glory and go around singing tediums, who cares? That's that's part of it.
But anybody can sing or try to sing and make a bad job of it, but they do the best. Oh, we praise you, God. Te deum laudamos. Sure. That's great.
How about getting down to nitty gritty daily life? What do you do for God? Today, you see, there's a there's a there's a downgrading of the importance of this edifice we call a church. There's a there's a move to look upon it simply as an assembly hall, a community building. Because, of course, that's profitable.
You see, people say, It doesn't make any sense to have a building costing maybe millions of dollars, and used only two or three times a week. We have to get it cost efficient. What's the bottom line? It's the way people talk today. I'm not exaggerating.
Not at all. A church is something special. And when you've traveled in South America, when you've traveled where where these churches are rather elaborate and enriched, where there is a lot of poverty, you will see in the you you don't have to be a a great observer to see how important that church is. And cardinal Newman, I've never been able to recover this passage, but he has a marvelous description of a poor factory. Notice this is the second half of the nineteenth century in England, when the Industrial Revolution is at its best.
When to say you were work a girl working in the factory was a pretty hard thing to say. And he Newman pictures this young woman walking along a London street in the fog, cold, and she walks into the church, and there's a benediction service going on, and how she's lifted out of her world. I say out of her world. What is her world? I've heard it said.
I can't prove it, but I've heard it said many times. I I read it just this past week, where Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York was built on the dimes of Irish maids. They took their dimes. That dime was an important piece of money to those young girls, and it was those dimes that put that edifice up. And it's their church, and it's to God.
It is not cost efficient. It is not at the bottom line of of the bookkeeper. It's what we give to God of ourselves that truly matters. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.