Two absolutely beautiful paragraphs

"Jesus unmasks this perverse mechanism: He denounces the oppression of the weak made instrumentally on the basis of religious motivations, saying clearly that God is on the side of the least. And to impress this lesson thoroughly in the disciples’ mind, He gives them a living example: a poor widow, whose social position was insignificant, because she didn’t have a husband who could defend her rights and therefore became an easy prey of an unscrupulous creditor, because these creditors persecuted the weak to make them pay. This woman, who puts only two coins in the Temple’s treasury, all that she had left, makes her offering, hoping to go unnoticed, almost embarrassed. However, in this humility, she in fact carries out an act charged with the religious and spiritual meaning. That gesture, full of sacrifice doesn’t escape Jesus’ attentive gaze who rather sees shine in it the total gift of self, to which He wants to educate His disciples.

"The teaching that Jesus gives us today helps us to recover what is essential in our life and fosters a concrete and daily relationship with God. Brothers and sisters, the Lord’s scales are different from ours. He weights differently persons and their gestures: God doesn’t measure the quantity but the quality, scrutinizes the heart and looks at the purity of the intentions. This means that our “giving” to God in prayer and to others in charity must always shun ritualism and formality, as well as the logic of calculation, and be an expression of gratuitousness, as Jesus has done with us: He has saved us for free. And we must do things as an expression of gratuitousness." --Pope Francis, Angelus Address Nov. 11, 2018