Catholic Exchange

1 Kgs 17:10-16 / Heb 9:24-28 / Mk 12:38-44

For those of us who read the newspapers and watch the nightly news, bad news is no novelty.  We get it all the time.  But once in a while something happens that is so monstrously evil that it almost stops our hearts.  One of those dreaded moments came several years ago this week when we listened with horror to the confession of a young mother who strapped her two little boys in the back seat of the family car and drowned them — so she could be free!  To us her actions seem incomprehensible, beyond belief.  “She must be crazy,” we say.  But, in fact, there’s a good chance she’s not. There’s a very good chance, indeed a likelihood, that her monstrous deed is quite comprehensible, almost predictable!

Big choices rarely come from outer space.  They come from within.  They come from the inner person that we have created — a tiny piece at a time — through thousands of choices across many years. Just as we are what we eat, we become what we choose.  It happens so slowly that we rarely notice, but through our daily choices we shape our heart as surely as a sculptor shapes his clay.  And our heart in turn impresses its shape on our deeds.

So, if a heart has slowly taken a shape that habitually says to itself, “I want what I want when I want it,” can there be any surprise that when a big moment of choice comes the choice is to seize what I want with no thought of what I may be doing to others?  How could that be a surprise?  The ugly deed is always “bought and paid for” well in advance.

But there’s another side to this tale, and it’s a happier one. Because gracious and true hearts are made in exactly the same way as vicious and selfish ones — through thousands of daily choices across many years.  Not one of our thousands of tiny decisions to be compassionate, gracious, and true ever gets lost.  Every one of them is incorporated into the fabric of our heart, and piece by piece they help to shape the deeds that come after them.

The two widows in Sunday’s readings had built gracious and true hearts in just that way over the years, and so when each was asked to give away all she had, the decision almost made itself. It didn’t come from outer space.  It came from the gracious inner person each widow had created one piece at a time.

We have, with God’s help, the power to create for ourselves hearts and lives that are compassionate, noble, and true.  We have the power to shape our future by shaping our present.

God has given us incredible power for good.  Let us not waste it! Let us use it well this day and always!