What does Father do in his spare time? Well, one of the things I’ve started to
watch is a documentary about the Second World War, called The World at War.
When I was at school, our coverage of the 1939-45 conflict was relatively
sketchy. The World at War is an old documentary, from the 1970s, narrated by
Laurence Olivier. It goes into quite a bit of detail, covering not only the Battle
of Britain, D-Day and so on, but the conflict in North Africa, the situation in
America and the Far East, U-boats and shipping, and all sorts of aspects that I
didn’t know too much about, together with interviews from people who were
on opposite sides during the War. There are twenty-six episodes, and I’m only
about half-way through.
One of the things mentioned a few times so far is how ordinary people
responded to the War. Whether it was the Russians in Stalingrad, the English in
London, or the Germans in Lübeck, they had to try and get on with life as
normal, not knowing what the final outcome would be, and supporting the war
effort as best as they could. At one point, when things were getting a bit dire,
it’s said that one of the governments decided to silence those of the populace
who were predicting defeat and disaster. But one of the things the documentary
so far hasn’t covered, is how all this affected people’s relationship with God –
that could be an interesting study in itself.
Imagine what must have been going through the mind of the widow in the first
reading: “I have no baked bread, but only a handful of meal in a jar and a little
oil in a jug; I am just gathering a stick or two to go and prepare this for myself
and my son to eat, and then we shall die.” It’s certainly an image of despair.
But she still decides to be generous with what she has, and God rewards her.
Maybe she’s a bit like the sort of person you might hear about at a funeral,
where a family member gets up to say: “Auntie Sue was the sort of person who
would give you her last five pound note if you asked her”. We encounter a
similar sort of person in the Gospel. Again, she’s a widow. This time, she puts
into the Temple treasury everything she possessed, all she had to live on. If
that’s not an act of faith, then I don’t know what is. These were people for
whom wealth and prosperity were not on their side, but they were close to God.
Meanwhile, we have the scribes. They put on a show of being religious, with
their lengthy prayers, but their life is all about status, having the best of
everything, and “swallowing up the property of widows”. “The more severe
will be the sentence they receive.”
Do riches corrupt? Not always, but sometimes, it seems. Does poverty bring
people closer to God? We can give the same answer: not always, but
sometimes, it seems. Do we put our security in money, or in God? Because we
have a relatively economically stable existence here, we can tend to assume
that, apart from inflation, money will be relatively secure. Contrast that with
one of the African nations, where I was told that the government re-issued the
currency, but it was the favourites of the government who were to the front of
the queue; the fact that you had savings in the old currency didn’t mean they
would be automatically and quickly converted to the new. Or take another
problem: in communist countries it was sometimes the case that you might
have money to spend, but there were such shortages in the shops that you
couldn’t get what you wanted, or even what you needed.
Our riches need to be in God – the future is not guaranteed. The past doesn’t
always show what the future will be like. For those who lived through the
Second World War, for some, things improved afterwards. For others, they did
not, such as those in the Eastern Bloc. They might have still had the same
money in the bank (for now), but having communists in charge made life a very
different situation indeed.
Our greatest treasure is our faith in God. As they sometimes say, the pay is not
that great, but the retirement plan is out of this world.
Curious about exploring things further? If you would like to ask further questions about the topics raised in these homilies (or maybe think it wasn’t explained too well!), please feel free to e-mail Fr Michael at stjoseph.thame@rcaob.org.uk