Monday of the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time(Click here for readings)
When Jesus looked up he saw some wealthy people putting their offerings into the treasury and he noticed a poor widow putting in two small coins.
A small boy with a massive tumor. I'd like to share with you an article I read not too long ago:
"Surgeons in New Mexico have removed a rare, football-sized tumor from the neck and upper body of a Mexican boy, capping a two-year charitable effort to get the disfigured child U.S. medical attention."
"The 11-year-old patient, Jose Antonio Ramirez Serrano from Ciudad Juarez...was expected to remain at the University of New Mexico Children's Hospital for at least a month recovering from Monday's surgery.
[U.S. missionaries] first noticed the child walking across a street in the impoverished Anapra neighborhood of Juarez two years ago and learned the child's family had exhausted all medical efforts in Mexico...
Faith-filled widow with two small coins. What I find most striking about today's beautiful Gospel passage is how nothing - not even a "small" act of faith and love - escapes God's eyes. The Lord saw what this poor widow did, and he set her on a pedestal, apart from all the others, for all to see, including his own Apostles. Her act of faith was enormous - gigantic!
How in the world could it have gone unnoticed by so many people?
Today's article and today's Gospel passage are so similar. How in the world could Jose Antonio's medical condition gone unnoticed by so many people?
What were the doctors in Mexico thinking? Are you going to tell me they were unaware of the great hospitals in the United States? They didn't care. They sent him away. They weren't concerned enough or determined enough to see this boy get the help he needed.
Where were the religious - the priests and nuns and local missionaries - in Cuidad Jauarez? Why didn't they mobilize the full force of the Catholic Church? Are you going to tell me they didn't have any important phone numbers or contacts?
What happened to the doctors and the religious is what happens to so many of us: we don't see our neighbor in the mirror. We don't see ourselves as Jose Antonio or ourselves as Jesus Christ! We don't see ourselves choking and dying a painful death because no one will really - honestly - help. We don't see ourselves as the one picking up our Cross and carrying it until everything is finished! It is finished!
The Spanish ministry coordinator for the First Baptist Church, Kristean Alcocer, said "Many promises were made [to the family] over the years, but no one ever came through with a meaningful solution."
So it took two foreigners, two American missionaries, from a Protestant Church to imagine themselves in this child's shoes and imagine themselves as Jesus Christ...and move some serious mountains!
God bless them!
It's amazing the big things we can do for little people if we only have the faith the size of a mustard seed...or two small coins.
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