Ordinary 32

The Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 2015 – Cycle B 1 Kings 17: 10-16; Psalm 146; Hebrews 9: 24-28; Mark 12:38-44

The scriptures are filled with widows.

The widow of Zarephath, the widow of Jerusalem, the widows that are taken advantage of by shrewd and powerful people, the widows who are protected and sustained by God. Mary was seemingly a widow, Saint Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton was a widow, Saint Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine, was a widow, Saint Rita was a widow, my grandmothers were widows, my aunt is a widow, my mother is a widow. The neighborhood had its widowed who lived next door and down the street: Mrs. Kolonczyk and Mrs. Dromerecka.

It happens in a moment.

As the three of us sat around my father as he was dying; in a final breath my mother, a wife of fifty years, became a widow. Our house always has had the presence of a widow. My father’s mother, then mom’s mother and now mom. Widows are prevalent throughout scripture and the psalms, in the history of the church and in society. They are present and yet, like many groups of people who threaten us or society, are made invisible to us. In our culture widows no longer wear widow’s weeds; that is, black, to signify their status in our midst. The presence of a woman or man who is marked by death is invisible and cannot threaten a culture like ours that denies our mortality and death.

What is it like to be partnered with another person for a life bound by love and commitment and suddenly – they are not there. I’ve heard spouses fearfully voice that they hope they will die first so as not to have to deal with; with the pain? …the loss? …the emptiness? …the loneliness?   Loneliness may be the most difficult to deal with as mom repeatedly voices: “No one remembers, no one calls…” There are also the financial worries for many older women; the never having driven a car or having balanced a check book. If the widowed spouse is younger the care of children is a great concern, suddenly becoming a one-parent family.

Over time, two people do become one, as we Christians believe about the Sacrament of Marriage. At the death of a spouse a whole half of a person dies. Is it any different for the spouse whose husband or wife has progressed Alzheimer’s disease and is already in some sense “not there”?

Being widowed is not the same as being single and not having experienced and lived married life.

For those with long, very close relationships to their spouses, the grief is different from that of a widowed person whose marriage was rocky; in which case, a feeling of liberation might be present.

Men and women whose spouse has died. What is their place in the Christian community?

What does their sudden, unchosen life have to say to us and society about Christian living that is different from Christians who are married, vowed in religious life as brothers, sisters, monks or nuns, the promised celibate life of the clergy and the single life of youth or later as a chosen manner of living?

In the New Testament, widows flourished in ministries as they drew close to Christ and to Christ’s people. They were and are free to follow the Crucified One. Widows were some of the first forms of consecration in the Church. From the medieval period widows and single women bonded together for prayer and works of charity that eventually developed into what we know as Religious Orders of sisters and nuns: founding and teaching in schools, colleges and universities, founding hospitals and orphanages so as to care for the sick and the abandoned, caring for the poor, the hungry and the homeless through works of charity. Consider the lives and work of Saint Katherine Drexel of Philadelphia among the Native American population of our country, Blessed Teresa of Kolkata among the poorest in India, Saint Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, founder of the first free school in our country and the first religious order, the Sisters of Charity, and Saint Jeanne Jugan, founder of the Little Sisters of the Poor. Though not all are widows, they continued the work begun by widowed women whose roots reach back to the earliest Christian communities and the medieval period. I would expect that many of us where taught by women from religious orders that were founded by widows. Obviously being widowed does not mean the end of life. It may mean a very different and new beginning.

There is also the dark side of being widowed. The reality of the nagging, gossipy widow. A destructive way of living life in a community. Even a plant of long thin leaves is named “widow’s tongue”. Therefore, not only must the Christian community reflect on widowed life but so do those who are widowed.

• After having lived a partnered life of commitment, to whom or to what can a person now be committed?

• How does a person sustain or reclaim a life as a one? The married couple, those vowed and living in community and the divorced can learn about our singularity.

• What about the abundant gift of time? What good, what service and for whom can this gift of time be used?

• Might a widowed person offer their life to intercessory prayer for the church?

• We cannot fill the emptiness within us from the death of a spouse. Is it because that emptiness is a gift from God, an opportunity, a catalyst for new ministries?

“Jesus called his disciples over and told them,

“I want you to observe the poor widow…” [Mark 12:43] for she has much to teach you.