In one of his essays,[1], Oscar Wilde wrote that, in his view:
the most tragic fact in the whole of the French Revolution is not that Marie Antoinette was killed for being a queen, but that the starved peasant of the Vendee voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause of feudalism.
Hearing our Gospel story this morning (in Mark 12.38-44), we might be tempted to say something similar: that the most tragic fact in the corruption of the world of Jesus was not the hideous colonial violence of the Romans and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, but that the poor widow gave all she had to a failing leadership and its flailing religious institution. Furthermore, what similar tragedies might we see, and be part of ourselves, in our own world?...
the most tragic fact in the whole of the French Revolution is not that Marie Antoinette was killed for being a queen, but that the starved peasant of the Vendee voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause of feudalism.
Hearing our Gospel story this morning (in Mark 12.38-44), we might be tempted to say something similar: that the most tragic fact in the corruption of the world of Jesus was not the hideous colonial violence of the Romans and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, but that the poor widow gave all she had to a failing leadership and its flailing religious institution. Furthermore, what similar tragedies might we see, and be part of ourselves, in our own world?...
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