Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (Homily)

November 08, 2015 11:00 am · Sergio Muñoz Fita

Today, rather than an articulated homily, I am going to try and imitate Pope Francis' style. I am going to give you four or five points in light of today's readings, and then each one of you can take the one that applies to your lives. The poor widow in today's Gospel reading, could hardly have ever dreamed that her trip to the temple that morning would be remembered by Christians for centuries. Today's Gospel can be used to reflect on many different aspects of our Christian life, because it speaks about generosity. And that's a virtue we need to practice in our everyday life.

Yesterday, this is going to sound weird but, yesterday I was thinking that this Gospel could be used to speak about the evil of contraception. In the Gospel, sitting across from the treasury Jesus was watching two different kinds of people. On the one hand we have those rich youths that put in large sums of money. They were giving something, but they were not giving everything. On the other hand we have this poor widow, she offered all she had. She gave herself. When two people practice contraception, they unknowingly imitate the first sort of people in today's Gospel, as they give something, but not everything. They withhold one fundamental dimension of their love and as a result of that, they are not really giving themselves.