A few days ago there was a story in the Washington Post about the new baseball stadium they’re building for the Washington Nationals.

The cheapest seats in the stadium, way up in the bleachers, almost in another zip code, will be $5.

The most expensive, right behind home plate, will be $400.

If you want to find the people who really love the game, they’ll be up in the $5 seats.

They’re the ones who don’t care how close they are, or whether or not they can even see anything. They just want the thrill of being there – smelling the popcorn, hearing the organ pound out the national anthem, feel the excitement of 40,000 other people on their feet, cheering in the summer sunshine. Baseball, really, was built by people in the $5 seats: dockworkers and store clerks and deliverymen and farm workers.

Their love for the game was never measured in how much they could spend…but on the depth of their devotion. It’s not the size of their wallets, but the size of their hearts.

If the widow in today’s gospel were a baseball fan…I think we know where she’d be sitting.

And that is part of the lesson from her life. She gives everything. I imagine that sense of charity probably pervaded her life. Maybe she was the one everyone went to when they had a problem, and she never turned anyone away. She was a widow – in the culture of the time, almost an outcast, a person on the margins of society, practically begging to make ends meet. But she gives anyway. She gives her all.

I wonder if Jesus noticed her because she reminded him of his own mother.

Like the people in the five-dollar seats, this widow has a small wallet…but a huge heart.

The question each of us has to ask ourselves is: how big is my heart?

Am I willing to give all I have, even when it isn’t easy?

Baseball was built out of love and devotion.

So was Christianity.

And in both, I think, it’s the people in the cheap seats who cheer the loudest…and love the deepest…and end up being a little bit closer to heaven.