Remember last weeks Gospel?

Mk 12:28-34 Love God with all you’ve got – all you’ve got, and your neighbour as yourself.

Well this weekend – Mk 12:38-44 – we’re given an example of living the great twin commandment and an example of the failure to live it.

The scribes “swallow the property of widows, while making a show of their lengthy prayers.”

Jesus is clear; this kind of evil disguised as religion, evil hidden beneath a religious veneer will attract a severe sentence.

The Catholic Church has been under this kind of heavenly judgement for some time.

Let’s just check-in to the power of these words: “The more severe will be the sentence they receive.”

The power of words – severe… feel it… and sentence.

Moving on to the widow – she’s an example of living the twin commandment. 

She puts two coins into the treasury; everything she has to live on.

She truly loves all that the treasury represents, she loves God with all – all her soul, mind, strength.

“It’s not how much we give but how much love is put in the giving” as Mother Theresa observed.

There’s something else we should notice about the widow: She hasn’t been put off by the blatant evil of the religious leaders all around her, unlike the claims of so many today.

The top spot in the kingdom belongs to this widow and her kind.

Hell belongs to the scribes and their kind.

Most of us are somewhere in between!