Today’s readings: 1 Kings 17, 10-16; Hebrews 9, 24-28; Mark 12, 38-44.
There are many people who have no status in Church or society and yet count a lot in God’s eyes. Throughout the gospels, Jesus upholds the genuine piety and faith of marginalised people against the religious hypocrisy of those who parade their religion. In today’s gospel, it forms part of his teaching: “Beware of the scribes”, dismissing the entire class as unfit for discipleship.
This is what we may call the prophecy of the gospel, which opens broad perspectives on our understanding of the Church and attributes great value to the experience and deepening of the faith by ordinary people. In his homily closing the synod of bishops in Rome, Pope Francis said: “A faith that does not know how to root itself in the life of people remains arid and, rather than oases, creates other deserts”.
Since its inception the Church has constantly experienced lack of harmony between the faith of ordinary people and learned theology or even official doctrine. Today’s Scriptures, with the narratives of the two widows from the time of Elijah and at the time of Jesus, highlight mostly this interiority, and uphold the richness and depth of faith that many a time simple people can manifest.
In the third century, with the rapid expansion of Christianity in the pagan world, the Fathers of the Church were provoked to think about this. Origen, for example, complained about what he called “uncultivated ignorance” termed as simplicity. On a different wavelength, Irenaeus, wrote: “It is better to know nothing and to be ignorant of the cause of all that exists, provided one believes in God and perseveres in His love, rather than to be puffed up by this knowledge and fall away from this love which makes us live”.
At present, in Church life and in theology, there are different views about the path the Church will or should take in the future in order to revitalise faith itself. What today should be at the centre, and what in some sense emerges also from the synod, is that believers in the life of the Church are not merely passive recipients of Church doctrine.
The idea of a teaching authority in the Church has always been linked to those who hold offices of authority and power. This has for too long put the faithful believers as mere objects of the pastoral concern of the Church. But the more we explore and deepen our understanding of what the Church was meant to be, the more we acknowledge that it is high time that we open our eyes.
Vatican Council II already underscored the faithful’s active role in the articulation and development of the faith. John Henry Newman, back in the 19th century, had emphasised the special significance of the witness to faith of ordinary people for the teaching Church, and above all for the continuity of official teaching.
In On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine, Newman laments the “implicit faith” required of the faithful and “which in the educated classes will terminate in indifference, and in the poorer in superstition”. Implicit faith is equivalent to blind faith that leaves no space for personal discernment.
Going back to today’s Scriptural texts, putting together the harsh condemnation of the scribes on the part of Jesus and the generosity of the poor widow, Mark is evidently condemning the prevailing system of official devotion. In line with his attack on the system, Mark accuses the scribal class of exploiting, rather than protecting, the poor.
We have been used to interpret Jesus here as simply praising the widow who gave “all she had to live on”. Some authors object to this interpretation and focus more on Jesus’s condemnation of the prevailing system in the temple, which was geared to discriminate and exclude rather than enhance and include.
The second reading from Hebrews distinguishes between the man-made sanctuary and the real one. God looks into people’s hearts and never judges on appearances. It is the humble heart that lends itself to be the real sanctuary where God dwells. This is the meaning in the first reading of the widow’s oil jug never emptied. It is through people’s lives and experiences that God continues to narrate His story of love and mercy to the world at large.