32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

My Spiritual Director, a man much wiser and more experienced than myself, when I would have expressed to him particular worries about the future, or the difficulties of life, he would often draw my attention to the greater narrative. Recounting together the hardships I went through, the really testing times I had to bear up. And then he would add,

“Well, God did not rescue you from the waves to let you die of exposure on the beach.”

Divine providence does not fail. God operates with an entirely different economy in mind. Above our day-to-day worries there is another economy, in which, as Christian poet and agrarian Wendell Berry put it, “even the fall of a sparrow is a significant event”.

This, in a way, is the lesson of the touching story of Elijah and the widow at Sidon:

“Jar of meal shall not be spent, jug of oil shall not be emptied, before the day when the Lord sends rain on the face of the earth.”’

Difficulties will come. There may be years of drought and there may even be famine. And yet - and yet, the Lord is prepared to provide for us, day by day, like for Israel in the desert, if we are ready to fall back onto him.

Such trust in the providence of God enables us to give Him our all. It is good to be reminded sometimes, as the Eastern Catholics’ and the Orthodox Church’s Divine Liturgy repeats from time to time, that God is good, and loves mankind. This is so wonderful — that we have a God who is not just some remote deity who does not care, not full of mystery and intrigue like the gods of ancient times, not a god of death and destruction like for some of the darker natural cults… But good, and loving mankind.

Such knowledge, such a realisation is what enables us to trust that yes, even in drought He can use the little we have; whether that’s a small jar of meal and a spoonful of oil; that he did not bring us out of the turbulent sea to allow us to die of exposure on dry land. But rather, “jar of meal will not be spent, jug of oil shall not be emptied.” Even if there is only a little bit left at the bottom — it will be enough.

And as we can hope for God’s physical providence, we can also hope for Him to not abandon us in the spiritual sense.

Because Elijah’s words have also a mystical meaning. The meal and the oil and the rain are all deeply symbolic. In the ground wheat we see a symbol of the Eucharist; in the oil we see the Unction of the Holy Spirit; in the “rain descending upon the earth” we see the coming of Christ in the flesh; as well as His second coming. One foreshadowing of the incarnation in the Old Testament is the dewfall onto Gideon’s fleece: water that descends yet keeping the wool dry is a foreshadowing of the virgin birth. Or elsewhere; as is familiar from Advent hymnody, the prophets talk of Christ as the “Just One” poured from the skies: “Drop down ye heavens from above and let the clouds rain down the Just One”. We sing it in the Advent Prose not only as the expectation of the Christ’s birth at Christmas, but it is also a song expressing our yearning for His second coming.

When rain comes after a drought, the land is renewed. Withering plants take on a new life, crops start to produce — all the things that were hindered from growth are now bursting with life, producing hundredfold. This is what we also expect from Christ’s second coming: that dried bones would take on new life; that sin, decay, death would no longer hinder us from being who God always intended us to be; and that the Kingdom of God would blossom and His reign would multiply and grow. But in the meantime, as hard as things can get, as hopeless as life may seem sometime, as dark and corrupt our times may get: the jar of meal will not be spent and the jar of oil will not fail. Because in God’s economy He provides enough for His own.

Well who are His own, however? I think the short answer is that those who are ready to entrust their lives to Him. The woman of Sidon, on the edge of taking her own life out of despair, as well as her daughter’s, was possibly not a Jew. Sidon, in today’s Lebanon, was a Phoenician city of great antiquity, culture, and formerly, of wealth — she may have been Jewish but there’s an equal chance she wasn’t. She would not have belonged by birth to the Old Covenant. And yet, she entrusts her life to God’s message and care. It doesn’t even need to be out of a strong faith; perhaps all she could muster at that point was doing it out of resignation: “I might as well give it a go.” With whatever little strength, with whatever little faith she has left, she thrusts herself into God’s mercy.

Similarly, the widow in the Gospel reading is ready to give her entire livelihood to God. While in the woman of Sidon we sense some despair and resignation, in this widow we sense some deep, deep righteousness and faith. She is there in the temple; she is ready to give all she has; because she has already given to God all she is: heart, soul, and might, as we heard last week.

And this is what connects the two women. Being ready to give all we are, all we have to God, even in the midst of poverty, aridity, despair, darkness, confusion. This is the start of God’s Kingdom, God’s economy starting to take root in our lives, where the smallest offering we may have will be enough; where jars of meal, of oil will not fail, until the rain comes.

Like most of us, I have had my times of darkness, and struggles with depression, despair, a sense of being stuck, times of hopelessness. Some days were, at times, spent in a lot of internal turmoil and pain. And as weak as I felt, as little as I felt I had to offer to God, I did find that the True Bread and the Anointing of the Spirit never failed me. On many occasions, after days of darkness, what brought true relief and real consolation, was making it to the evening Mass on one of the weekdays, and receiving the Sacrament. Times when I felt I couldn’t pray I had a true sense of the intercession of others, and of the Blessed Virgin: she does heed our requests of praying for us; sometimes instead of us, now — not only at the hour of our death.

And yet, in all this, all I had was a tiny bit left at the bottom of the jar. I had very little to offer to God. And at times all I possessed was actually pain and suffering.

Times of drought will come for each of us. Whether individually or whether as a society, there will be times when material wealth is starting to fail. So we have a choice: do we suffer through it on our own, or do we suffer through it with God? Because it doesn’t matter what we have, or how much we have: God desires us, as we are, whether we only have a handful of meal and a spoonful of oil left in us; or whether what we might be able to offer is not more than some loose change. God wants us: with our poverty, with our hopelessness, with our pain, with our despair. These are the things He came to redeem.

And finally, a brief note on current politics. It is a “strange coincidence” that we read of this woman wanting to take her own life as parliament is ready to debate assisted suicide. There are people who sink to the utmost despair, who have lost all hope, whether through physical or emotional pain. Wanting to take our life is in a way, utopia: in these situation the idea of death seems to be the gateway to a pain-free, peaceful state, where no more suffering can reach us. We must do better than that: we must be able to present those who suffer with better alternatives than death. Because the jar need not fail for them either. They can also suffer through it in a way that proves redemptive, because they suffer with God. They can also be given enough to go through whatever time of allegorical drought they experience. Because human souls are eternal, human life is of infinite worth, even in its lowest form: 1 times infinity is infinity the same way as 100 times infinity. Please, please write to your MP’s, make your voice heard, so that there remains a chance for people who suffer to actually experience the jar of meal not failing in their drought. And let us make sure that they do receive the kind of help and assistance they need to find better options out of their despair than the thought of suicide. Their pain, their suffering, their despair can be also redeemed now, as we await the coming of the Lord, as much as ours; if we are ready to entrust ourselves to the Living and True God.