The Essential or the Superfluous?

Simone Riva - Christ points to the method of the poor widow's gesture because it is the same method as God's: to give everything.

What do we have to live on? This Sunday's Gospel presents us with a stark and straightforward scene in which Jesus, "Sitting in front of the treasury, he observed how the crowd threw coins into it. Many rich people were throwing a lot. But when a poor widow came, she threw in two small coins, which make a penny. Then, calling his disciples to himself, he said to them, 'Truly I tell you, this widow, so poor, has thrown more into the treasury than all the others. For all have thrown some of their surplus. On the other hand, in her misery, she has thrown everything she had into it, everything she had to live on'" (Mark 12:41-44).

Christ allows himself to be provoked by what he sees. Indeed, everyone sees what he sees, but only to him does reality speak with a unique intensity. The gesture of that poor widow must have especially struck him and moved him to the point of pointing it out as a method to everyone else. Of course, the episode is laden with polemic criticism against a certain way of understanding religiosity that had crept in among the people. Still, the widow's gesture removes energy even from the polemic and opens the space for the real question: what do we have to live for? What is our essential? Are we already putting it on the line, or are we still dispensing the superfluous?

There was a gesture in recent weeks that struck me when I walked into one of my classes. As soon as the class starts, some people take their chairs and come to sit in front of me as if they feel the need for a new involvement. It may be because of the power of their questions that we are delving into, or it may be because they are growing up, but the fact is that the first one to be amazed by that impetus is me. It is an example of how one suddenly puts aside superfluous attention, presence, or energy and decides to get down to the essentials.

God has always done this with us. I am writing this article immersed in the vineyards of South Tyrol. The afternoon is warmed by a sun whose rays color the yellowing leaves of the plants with infinite hues. On the hillside, fireplaces smoke, hinting at the coziness of the houses. The scenery is beautiful, to leave one spellbound. Everything speaks of a "waste" so that someone could notice. Christ points to the method of the poor widow's gesture, for it is the same method as God's: to give everything.

Only a commotion like Jesus' will allow us to be impressed in the face of all the examples we are surrounded by. The alternative is the cage of the superfluous, which, like quicksand, will engulf us in an impressive spiral of self-forgetfulness. A friend, Gianni Mereghetti, wrote this in a poem these days: "Today I carried burdens that curved me, it was not me who held them, too much for my fragile appearance, there is someone who bends over me even if I do not invoke him, even in this blanket of fog I feel I am not alone, in the darkness there is a human figure advancing!" What a gift to discover the presence of the true Present One, who spares nothing of Himself so that love for the essential may flourish in us.
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The author has not revised the translation.