This Sunday’s Gospel passage unites two contrasting scenes. In the first, Jesus warns and severely criticizes the scribes and religious leaders of his time, because they use religion for their own benefit, to show off power, display ambition, seek honors and feign piety. They are experts in studying God’s law, but their hearts and behavior are totally distant from Him.
In the second scene, Jesus contemplates a poor widow, possibly with an elementary and basic religious formation, who goes to the Temple of Jerusalem with piety and devotion. As she passes by the offering box, she throws in two small coins of minimal value, but which represent all that she has and all that she can give.
“It must be clear that being a minister of religion does not automatically mean being shameless, for there are sacrificial priests and saints, and being poor does not automatically mean being a saint.”
To avoid a caricature, I must say that in Jesus’ time there were also pious scribes, like the one who conversed with Jesus last Sunday or like Nicodemus. They were men who sincerely sought God and lived an authentic religion. And surely there were also people as poor as the widow, who did not care about religion or the fulfillment of the law. That is to say, it must be clear that being a minister of religion does not automatically mean being shameless, for there are sacrificial priests and saints, and being poor does not automatically mean being a saint.
This gospel passage presents two types of religious characters, both then and now. At one extreme, there is the ambitious and manipulative ecclesiastic who uses religion as a ladder for social and economic promotion and as a means to obtain power. On the other side, there is the humble, genuine and poor believer, who aspires to nothing more than to be close to God. Between these extremes, there are all possible combinations. Jesus brings forward God’s judgment on both: for the former, condemnation, punishment, failure before God; for the latter, praise, because in her offering she has given all she had to live on.
“We should take note of the aberrations we can fall into when we allow ourselves to be driven by ambition for wealth and power.”
What should we do with this gospel? We ecclesiastics should take note of the aberrations into which we can fall when we allow ourselves to be carried away by the ambition for wealth and power, for then we cease to be believers and become manipulators of religion for our own benefit. It is a sin that has always existed, which does not justify it, but warns us how easy it is to fall into it if we do not take precautions to keep ourselves in the authenticity and truthfulness of the ministry that has been entrusted to us.
You, the laity, should listen to this gospel as a warning not to turn away from God because of the scandal that some of us cause by turning religion into a mechanism of power. You have the right to defend yourselves from the manipulative ecclesiastic who uses his power to abuse. The culture of silence helps no one, neither God nor the Church. All abuse must be denounced. But it is also a crime to slander an ecclesiastic out of revenge, perhaps for a decision that sought to bring order to your parish and that took away the little power you exercised in the Church. Sometimes I receive complaints against priests that are pure slander, but I know that in this clerical guild to which I belong there are abusers of power, who thus pervert the mission they have received in the Church. This is the sin of clericalism, in which, surprisingly, also fall some lay people with some ministry in the Church and who, for that reason, feel empowered to abuse others.
“We have a great responsibility to act with integrity, conviction, generosity and dedication, and thus reciprocate the trust.”
We often tell priests that we have a great responsibility to act with integrity, conviction, generosity and dedication, and thus correspond to the trust that you, the laity, place in us. There are countries where the faith and the Church have disappeared. Partly responsible for this demolition have been the clergy because of our incoherence, lack of faith and quest for power. But in part, also, the demolition of the Church in other places has been due to the fact that the laity have thought that it is no longer necessary. Not yet here.
I want to conclude with a brief explanation of the second reading. The letter to the Hebrews contributes to our understanding of the work of Christ in a peculiar way. The author of the letter takes as a model the ritual that took place in the Temple of Jerusalem once a year, on a special day called the Day of Atonement. On that day, and only on that day of the year, the high priest sacrificed a ram, collected the blood of the animal and, with it in a jar, entered the most sacred precinct of the Temple of Jerusalem to sprinkle the blood and thus beg forgiveness for his own sins and those of the people.
In a similar way, Christ, constituted high priest according to the rite of Melchizedek, shed his blood on the cross, and by his resurrection entered into the sacred precincts of heaven, before God himself, bearing his own blood on his hands for the forgiveness of our sins, for he had none. Thus the veil of the Temple was rent, heaven was opened, and we now have entrance into the presence of God. Thus Christ accomplished our salvation. And this is what we actualize in every celebration of the Eucharist.