By some accounts, 156,412,148 people cast a ballot in the 2020 Presidential Election. This a thousand times more people than are recorded in the first reading today. So if one were to take this figure literally, the number of people who reach heaven is small indeed.
However, the population of Israel at the time of the writing of the Book of Revelation, it is estimated that there were no more than 4,000,000 Jews in the whole world. The ratio of those saved is consequently somewhat more acceptable.
Of course the figure isn’t literal at all. Taking the number twelve, a symbolic number in Jewish thought and theology, and multiplying it 12,000, another symbolic number, results in a crowd that would literally be “uncountable” for the people of this time. Thus Scripture scholars agree that the number used by the sacred writer was simply a matter ot saying that it was a vast crowd.
The Gospel for today also has a numerical component to it. A widow deposits two small coins in the Temple treasury. Jesus comments on her extreme generosity.
While Scriptural numerology is fascinating and has been studied extensively, perhaps a far more important message is that the extent of God’s mercy is beyond calculation just as the generous offering of the widow is beyond comprehension. God’s mercy is lavish, and the widow responds in kind.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator