Today’s gospel hands us a familiar account—the widow who puts two small coins into the treasury while other, more prominent citizens, put in larger sums of money, and yet Jesus lauds the poor widow as generous. He does this in order to highlight how He is disgusted by "hypocrisy."

The poor widow gives the two small coins out of her poverty—in modern parlance we would say her donation "hurt" because it comes at the expense of something else—perhaps food or clothing or medicine. The "big givers"—the scribes—are giving their larger payments from their great wealth. "Hypocrisy" comes into play when we look closely at just what is the motivation behind the scribes’ actions? In the ancient world we are told that scribes fulfilled some of the duties of "modern lawyers", such as administering estates for a fee. As the gospel notes, these scribes "devour the houses of widows"—and by fulfilling the duties of "lawyer’ vis-à-vis widows, these scribes would oversee or administer the estate of the widow and collect a fee for the work. They did this as they publically prayed and appeared to be doing everything as a ‘good citizen" all the while they might have bilked the poor widow. Remember that also in the ancient world widows and orphans were vulnerable because they had no rights and needed to be cared for by their male family members or a scribe to administer their "estate".

Jesus cannot tolerate this hypocrisy: standing on the corner and saying one thing for public consumption while doing the exact opposite—especially when this is being done in the name of God. Jesus calls us to live our faith fully. Sacred Scripture tells us that nothing that has been said or done will not be heard or known.