Blessing I will bless her widow; I will satisfy her poor with bread (Ps 131[132], 15). Everyone who knows himself left without any help except God's is a widow. ... Thus the entire Church is a single widow, whether in men or in women or in the married or in women with husbands or in adolescents or in the elderly or in virgins: the entire Church is a single widow, left in this world, provided she knows this, if she knows her widowhood, for then help is at hand for her. Dont you recognize that widow in the Gospel when the Lord says that its necessary to pray always and not to faint? There was a judge in a certain city, it says, who neither feared God nor regarded man. And a certain woman accosted him every day and said, Avenge me of my adversary. And by accosting him every day, she broke him. And that judge, who neither feared God nor regarded man, said to himself, Although I do not fear God and men do not shame me, I will avenge her because of the nuisance that widow is causing me (Lk 18:1-8) If that wicked judge heard the widow so he wouldnt be annoyed by her, does God not hear the Church that he urged to pray? Be poor, then, be among the members of that widow, and dont look for help anywhere but in the one God.... [Augustine, In Ps 131,23, 25; PL37:1725-27]

Rev. Joseph A. Komonchak, professor emeritus of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America, is a retired priest of the Archdiocese of New York.

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