For about ten days the first weekday lectionary readings for Catholics will be about Elijah, the prophet. For many years these stories have inspired me.
Today’s story (1 Kings 17: 7-16) is about the widow of Zarephath, who in her poverty responds to Elijah’s request for water and bread.
She has only enough for one meal of bread and water for her son and herself. “I am just now gathering some sticks so that I may go in and prepare something for myself and my son to eat – and then die.”
But she shares, after hearing the word of Elijah, “Do not fear.” And there was enough flour and oil for a year!
She risks her life – her food – for a foreign prophet whose only promise is the loving providence of God which he had experienced for several months at the Wadi Cherith, where the water flowed and where crows brought him bread and meat twice a day.
How many times have I seen this generosity, this trust in God, especially from women.
Today a friend, Sister Pat Farrell, and others from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious are in Rome speaking to Vatican officials. I pray that her generosity and her devotion to the God of the Poor – lived out in San Antonio, Chile, El Salvador, and Omaha – may open the way for God to work and multiply the good works of God in this world.
walk the way 