Thirty Second Sunday of Ordinary Time

November 10, 2024

Today’s Invitation

Today we invite you to explore the God who comes through the poor and dispossessed, with the help of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign; engage the truth of liberation theology in Catholic Social Teaching; and embody the theology of the poor with the movement song “Rich Man’s House.”

Commentary by Adam Barnes

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Reading 1

1 Kings 17:10-16

So Elijah went to Zarephath. When he arrived at the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, “Could you bring me a little water in a jar for me to drink.” As she was going to get the water, he called out, “And please bring me a piece of bread.”

“As YHWH lives,” she replied, “I do not have any bread — only a handful of flour
in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a couple sticks to take home and
make a meal for me and my child. We will eat it — and then we will die.”

Elijah said to her, “Do not be afraid! Go home and do what you said. But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me; and then make something for yourself and your child. For this is what YHWH, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day YHWH makes it rain. on the land.’”

The widow went away and did what Elijah had told her to do. And there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. The jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of YHWH spoken by Elijah.

Responsorial Psalm

Psalm 146

Response: Praise God, O my soul!

Adonai, You keep faith forever, / secure justice for the oppressed,
And You give food to the hungry. / Adonai, You set captives free.
R: Praise God, O my soul!

You give sight to the blind. / You raise up those that were bowed down and love the just.
You protect strangers.
R: Praise God, O my soul!

The orphan and the widow You sustain, / but the way of the wicked You thwart.
The Most High will reign forever, / your God, O Zion, through all generations. Alleluia.
R: Praise God, O my soul!

Reading 2

Hebrews 9:24-28

For Christ did not go into a holy place made by human hands, a copy of the real one. Christ went into heaven itself and now appears on our behalf in the presence of God. High priests of old went into the Most Holy Place every year with the blood of an animal. But Christ did not make a self-offering more that one time; otherwise, Christ would have had to suffer many times ever since the creation of the world.

But now that the Consummation is upon us, Christ has appeared once and for all, to remove sin through self-sacrifice. It is appointed that everyone must die once and then be judged by God. In the same way, Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many, and then will appear a second time — not to deal with sin, but to save those who are waiting for Christ’s appearance.

Gospel

Mark 12:38-44

In his teaching, Jesus said, “Beware of the religious scholars who like to walk about in long robes, be greeted obsequiously in the market squares, and take the front seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. These are the ones who swallow the property of widows and offer lengthy prayers for the sake of appearance. They will be judged all the more severely.” Jesus sat down opposite the collection box and watched the people putting money in it, and many of the rich put in a great deal.

A poor widow came and put in two small coins, the equivalent of a penny. Then Jesus called out to the disciples and said to them, “The truth is, this woman has put in more than all who have contributed to the treasury; for they have put in money from their surplus, but she has put in everything she possessed from the little she had — all she had to live on.”

The inclusive language psalms:
Leach, Maureen, O.S.F. and Schreck, Nancy, O.S.F., Psalms Anew: A Non-sexist Edition
(Dubuque, IA: The Sisters of St. Francis, 1984).
Used with permission.

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The Truth of Liberation

Psalm 146 describes God as one who loves the just, feeds the hungry, protects the stranger, the orphan, and the widow. We are told how God is the one who sets the captive free, gives sight to the blind, and “raises up those that were bowed down.” The Psalmist clearly underscores that God is active in our lives and in the world, especially wherever and whenever life is threatened or degraded. In 1 Kings Elijah goes on to remind us that God’s loving action in our world is not limited. It extends in abundance to all, “the jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day YHWH makes it rain on the land.” (1 Kings 17:16). Elijah also provides an answer to the critical question of “How?” How, in this cruel, violent, and unjust world do we praise a God of love, mercy, and justice? How do we keep this God of truth, who cares for the widow and the brokenhearted at the center when the forces we are up against so often degrade, impoverish, and violate life?

At first Elijah’s response may seem cruel. When he encounters a desperate widow who has little hope of living and only wants to feed her child “and die,” he does not give her food, instead he asks her to bring him water and prepare him food. Yet, in doing this he is not ignoring her needs or her despair. He is affirming her individual divinity and power. He is reminding us that, first, like the Psalmist, God moves and acts in this world and second, that the way God acts is not, and will never be, from the top-down, but from the bottom up. The world that the widow lives in does not value her life. Her salvation will not come from that world and its leaders. It will come from her and others like her coming together, rejecting that world that denies and violates life, and claiming their power with God to recreate it. The message of this and other passages like it, including the Gospel for this week, Mark 12:38-44, often glorify poverty and paternalize the relation of God to the poor. We are led to see the poor humbly enduring their poverty and giving what little they have to God out of steadfast devotion. This pious romanticization and pitying of the poor takes away their power and agency and designates God as a distant all-powerful provider. Elijah reminds us that God is near us, part of all of us, and we act together to realize the world God wants, one of abundance for all.

In 1967, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others were preparing to launch the Poor People’s Campaign, which was a national effort to unite the poor (the least of us, which is most of us) across race, geography, social struggle, and more to end poverty and fundamentally transform this nation. King understood his faith as deeply tied to the destiny of the poor:

“I choose to identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to give my life for those who have been left out…This is the way I’m going. If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way… If it means dying for them, I’m going that way.”

King also understood that to truly transform this nation and world – to do the will of the God who is described in Psalm 146 – means taking action with God. And, King, like Elijah, believed that in taking action we are not saving the poor, but helping the poor take action together, which will ultimately save us all.

“The dispossessed of this nation – the poor, both white and Negro – live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against the injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty…There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose. If they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life…” (Massey Lectures (1967)).

Commentary by Adam Barnes

Adam Barnes is the Director of Religious Affairs at the Kairos Center and helps lead the Freedom Church of the Poor each week. Born in St. Louis, MO and raised most of his life in Colorado, Adam has lived in New York since 2006 and has worked at the Poverty Initiative/Kairos Center since 2007. In 2016 he completed a PhD in Comparative Theology at Union Theological Seminary. His dissertation investigates the liberative theology and spirituality emerging from anti-poverty struggles in the US and in a Sufi-Muslim community in West Africa. He is the father of three amazing children and married to the equally amazing Shailly Gupta Barnes.

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Engage Catholic Social Teaching

Economic Justice

Some Catholics who are tired of the status quo lift up the example of liberation theology and theologians in Latin America because they are some of the most powerful modern examples we have of the radical message embedded in Catholic Social Teaching.

From the 1960s-on, Catholic clergy who sided with the poor and dispossessed, often against governments and murderous right wing militias in countries like Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia, found themselves at odds with the Church, often US-backed right wing governments, and the wealthy. Some liberation theologians and practitioners were martyred with their people. Martyrs include Óscar Romero, Camilo Torres Restrepo, and the six Jesuits and two women murdered at Central American University in El Salvador. That practicing a theology of liberation became so dangerous speaks to its power. Liberation theology helps people understand the Jesus stories as those of a movement of dispossessed people, taking their lives into their own hands, coming together to oppose an oppressive force.

Catholics of all stripes lean on Catholic social teaching to ground their interpretations of Catholicism. While liberation theology has many critics, particularly those closer to power in various ways, reading over the tenets of Catholic social teaching sounds like the message of liberation theology: Life and dignity of the human person; call to family, community, and participation; rights and responsibilities; option for the poor and vulnerable; the dignity of work and the rights of workers; solidarity; care for God’s creation. Liberation theology’s deep roots in the message of Jesus and communities of the poor and dispossessed can be found in the plain language of Catholic social teaching.

Although some liberationists have and still do die for their work, the demands of liberation theology – and Jesus’s message – can be worked into our everyday lives, no matter the circumstances we find ourselves in. There is much more waiting for those who follow the word of liberation theology than death and brutality.

Liberation theology asks us what it means to dedicate our lives to those around us, and to something bigger than ourselves. If the Catholic Church holds some of the wisdom and legacy of Jesus’s mission to free his people from an oppressive empire, then a Catholic ethic must speak to the communal bonds we can cultivate to work for the betterment of the collective, which includes ourselves.

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A Contemplative Exercise

A Contemplative Exercise

Watch and reflect: Rich Man’s House

In this short video you can learn more about the history of this powerful movement song, which emerged from the active struggles of the organized poor in the US. When we sing we connect to the spirit and power of the organized poor who refuse a world of poverty and injustice and “take back” what was stolen – “our dignity!” “our humanity!” God’s promise of abundant life is for all and God is present wherever life is violated and degraded. Watch this video and reflect on who in your community is a leader. How does our world diminish, hide, and misunderstand poverty and what it means to be poor? Why do we so often understand God as acting for the poor, but not through the poor?

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