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I love church ladies, but not as much as Jesus loves them.
In the Gospel story of the “widow’s pennies” Jesus Christ himself singles out a representative of the group of people that has by the far the greatest impact on parish life, worldwide and throughout history: The women who serve with such little fanfare that we tend not to notice them.
This story gives us an amazing glimpse of the Church from God’s perspective.
I love the way Mark contrasts two groups of people. First is the scribes who “like to go around in long robes and accept greetings in the marketplaces, seats of honor in synagogues, and places of honor at banquets.”
We all know the type of person he is talking about because, chances are, we see one in the mirror. We love not just to do great things for the Church, but to be seen as doing great things for the Church. We love having our contributions noticed.
But then, a woman gets praised for giving “her whole livelihood.”
Think of the people in your parish who put in “their whole livelihood.”
Think of the church ladies: The women who are always there in the background but rarely up in the spotlight. Some organize the works of the parish, then clean up when they are done; they both make sandwiches for the poor and organize the volunteers to deliver them; they make the bulletin and arrange the flowers on the altars. Others make sure the pews are filled: They bear children, nurse them, and instruct them, and then get them to the church, making sure they look sharp.
Many men do many of these things, of course, but many more women do them.
Maybe it’s genetic. Gallup surveyed 80,000 people in 76 countries and found that women everywhere tend to be more altruistic, patient, and giving.
Maybe it’s cultural: author Frederica Mathewes Green wrote that, unlike superhero women, who are great like “honorary men,” a heroine like the Virgin Mary “wins our love for doing the ordinary things women have done through history.”
But church ladies are also counter-cultural: Often, what they do is dismissed as “women’s work,” Greene said, “yet without that continuous stream of ‘women’s work,’ history itself would come to an end.” True: and our parishes, too.
Church ladies have changed my life.
The widow in the Gospel always reminds me of my Nana Elvira who lived in what had once been the rectory for a parish my family served. She was a little old Mexican lady who always handed us holy cards when we visited. She had a calendar on her refrigerator that she got from a religious order she was supporting from her social security checks.
But it also reminds me of the women who created the All Saints Day parties, Catechesis of the Good Shepherd atriums, the vocations days, and vacation Bible camps that helped my children discover that the faith is alive even outside our home.
Most of all, though, I think of the “church lady” I married, who has prepared couples for marriage and teens for confirmation for decades. She equips her children and grandchildren with the best new materials to bolster their faith, and handed out “Litany of Trust” prayers to the suffering, and patron-saint icons to caregivers when she was in the hospital.
Good church ladies are the very opposite of the scribes and Pharisees.
For them the faith is not an exclusive club, but a welcoming committee. They aren’t out to win big, but to give continually. They don't withhold their affections based on the shabbiness of the Church’s externals; they brighten drab places with their kindness. They don’t give just enough to be praised, they give what is required until nothing more is needed.
With them, what you see is what you get. They aren’t virtue signaling to try to impress you. They are too busy witnessing to notice how they are coming across; or, better, they are just too busy, period.
Even Jesus wants to be like them.
After criticizing the Pharisees in Mark, he points to the widow. In the same spot in Matthew’s Gospel, he points to himself and says:
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings, but you were unwilling!”
He literally says he wants to be a mother hen.
May we all be like that — not the noisy roosters strutting and crowing about our accomplishments, but the mother hens away in the corner giving “their whole livelihood.”
