weekly HOMILY for November 12, 2006: Having Trust and Being Trustworthy

32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle B
Our Lady of Grace
November 12 2006

Having Trust and Being Trustworthy
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato


Trust Walk

The 6th Graders were having their annual retreat. The theme this year was trust and the retreat day began with a wonderful activity called a “Trust Walk.”

Many of us are familiar with the exercise and may have done a Trust Walk at some time or another. What happened is that the 86 boys and girls were paired off.

In each pair, one of students was blindfolded and the other was the leader. The leader led the blindfolded partner through the aisles and rows of chairs in the school hall.

The catch was that the leader could guide only by words and not by physical touch. For the boys and girls, this was both a fun activity and a good learning experience.


Scripture and Trust

I begin with the familiar idea of a Trust Walk because it illustrates one of the themes in today’s Scripture readings.

In the first reading, a widow gives something to eat to the Prophet Elijah. She does this even though she has practically nothing left for herself to eat.

In the Gospel, once again a widow is in the spotlight. She puts two small copper coins into the Temple treasury. Jesus says that she “contributed all that she had.”

What I see is a great deal of trust in both of these widows. Both of them trusted in God and they acted on and lived out of that trust. It’s what made them free enough to give our of their need, not knowing where their next meal would come from.


Lesson 1: Having Trust

The image of these two widows in the Scripture calls us also to trust in God.

Trust is part and parcel of our faith. It is an expression of our faith in God.

On the Trust Walk of those 6th Graders, those who were blindfolded needed to trust the word of their partner, leading them to turn left or right or to go straight ahead. In a similar way, our faith calls us to trust in the Word of God.

Trust does not mean that we naively believe that things will always be easy or comfortable or the way we want them to be. It does mean that we believe that God is good and loving and will always here with us.

Trust means that we believe that in some way good can come from evil and life can come from suffering and death. It means that we believe the words of Jesus: “I am with you always, even till the end of the world.”


Lesson 2: Being Trustworthy

The image of the two widows in today’s readings also calls us to be trustworthy.

They were generous and caring and used the little that God had given them very well. Once, on a former Trust Walk, one boy decided to play a trick on his blindfolded partner and actually he led him into a wall.

The partner got a bruise and a knot on his forehead. The lesson? Some folks will end up being untrustworthy.

In contrast to young man, the two widows in our readings invite us to be trustworthy with what God has given us. What might this mean for us today?

One thing that it means can be found in the root meaning of the word “widow.” In the original Hebrew, the word for widow is al-ma-nah which means “the silent one.”

The Society of Jesus’ day was very patriarchal and male-dominated. An unmarried woman lived in the house of her father and he was her voice. When she married she moved into the house of her husband and he became her voice. So, if a woman was widowed, she had no one to speak for her and secure her rights and livelihood.

She was “the silent one.”

I would like to suggest that one of the ways we can be trustworthy in relation to God is to speak up for the silent ones of our own day – that is, to speak up for those who have no voice in our society.

This might be the unborn or those living on minimum wage or near the so-called poverty line. It could be that we speak up for the 45 million Americans who have no health insurance or those who are terminally ill.

So often these persons are the silent ones, those without real voice in our society and part of our trustworthiness is to speak on their behalf.


Summary

To sum up, our faith includes trust in God.

And trust in God is to lead us to be trustworthy with what God has given us.

Both, are simple yet profound