Daily Gospel Reflection
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November 25, 2019
Jesus looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins.
He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”
Klank! Klank! The two copper coins of love.
I experienced the two copper coins of love in my mother. One of nine children in a post-World War II era, my mind counts the pouring out of her last physical and emotional coins doing wash, cooking meals, keeping schedules, drying tears, and participating in the lives of her children, all while Dad worked two jobs. In retrospect, Rosie the Riveter, the World War II icon, had nothing on my mother!
Besides spending every last bit of energy in the household, she literally turned the piggy bank upside down for the few coins left in it. Why? So her children had spending money, like the other children, for the parish “Fall Fiesta.” That is selfless love. That is the widow in today’s gospel.
In one way or another we all experience poverty whether it is physical, emotional, psychological or spiritual. Jesus invites us to give of our very beings, not just the abundance of material goods that we accumulate. Jesus invites us to sacrificial love. Jesus asks us to use our talents, our treasures for the sake of others, in his name. What will be your copper coins in the container of love today?
Prayer
Spirit of Love, inspire us to give all we are and all we have to the building of your kingdom. Help us to realize that any abundance we have is not for our own good, but for the good of others. May we learn to enter into the spirit of the widow who gave her all so that others might benefit, even in her poverty. Divest us of anything that might slow us in the building of those places where you live and reign, Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Catherine of Alexandria is a patron saint of students of philosophy because she went toe-to-toe with the greatest minds of her age, and converted them to Christianity at the tender age of eighteen.
Very little of her life is known with certainty. The chief story that has been handed down to us reports that Catherine was born into a well-to-do family living in Alexandria at the beginning of the fourth century, and dedicated her life to education. Her studies led her to consider the truth about Christianity, and when she received a vision of Mary holding the child Jesus, she converted to the faith.
When the emperor Maxentius began persecuting Christians, Catherine visited him and rebuked his decision, even though she was just a teenager. Catherine began to argue with the emperor in defense of Christianity. Maxentius could not respond to Catherine’s arguments, so he gathered fifty learned philosophers to oppose her. When her reasoning converted them, Maxentius was enraged. He tried to seduce her and make her part of his court, but she refused and was beaten and imprisoned.
She continued to convert people who came to visit her in prison, including Maxentius' wife, and so Catherine was condemned to die upon a spiked wheel. When she was placed upon it, her hands were miraculously freed and the wheel shattered. She was then beheaded.
Catherine is often depicted with the broken wheel, as in the portrait above, which hangs in the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. Another depiction of Catherine, the copper relief seen below, is from the chapel in the Fischer Graduate Residences community center. Catherine's wheel can be viewed in the lower right-hand corner. A few of Catherine's relics rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Notre Dame's campus.
When Joan of Arc received messages from heaven, it was Catherine’s voice that she heard. St. Catherine of Alexandria is a patron saint of philosophers, preachers, students—particularly women studying in higher education, and those who work with wheels or mills.
St. Catherine of Alexandria, patron saint of students and Christian philosophers—pray for us!
Image Credit: Bernardino Luini (Italian, ca. 1480-ca. 1532), St. Catherine of Alexandria, late 15th/early 16th century, oil on panel. Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Fred J. Fisher, 1951.004.004.