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32d Sunday in Ordinary Time. Mk 12/38-44 |
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| Background: Scriptural and Liturgical Reflection Today's liturgy features two widows, one who makes her small contribution to the temple treasury, the other makes some bread for Elijah from the remnant of flour in he jar. Do we not know both women well? Have we not encountered them often - elderly women who have very little but are generous with what they have in the care of others? Does not their goodness bring a catch to our throat? They were once young and happy with a husband and children. Now they are alone and living off small pensions. Yet their generosity and love brings beauty to their wrinkled faces and stooped shoulders. We may notice them but rarely. God notices them all the time. They are among his most favorite people |
read the padre |
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Story: Once upon a time there was a candidate traveling franticly around his constituency at the end of a long and difficult campaign. He was under constant, as he saw it, unfair attack from his opponent who was an unscrupulous man and from hostile media who reported false stories about him and his family every day. Although he had a long and distinguished history of public service, the poles said the race was too close to hall. Discouraged, battered, worn out, he had lost his usual flair for the campaign and went through the motions as if they were drudgery. One day after what was supposed to be a passionate speech but actually was just one more dud, as he was walking away from the platform, surrounded by his staff and a handful of well-wishers, he heard an old voice crying out his name. He glanced to the edge of the crowd. An old woman in a wheel chair was shouting at him. Don't pay any attention to her, said his managers. He was tired of old women in wheel chairs. Still he broke through the crowd and walked over to her. Tears pouring down her cheeks, she babbled incoherently about a husband who had died in the War and held out a five dollar bill for his campaign. Tears pouring down his cheeks, he embraced her, took the crumpled bill, and pledged that he would win the race, just for her if for no one else.
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