Giving
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Updated
February 20, 2008
Our word "pittance" has come to mean a very tiny gift, but that was not its
original meaning. In the Middle Ages the term referred to a very substantial
sum, given "out of piety and pity." Often the interest from the fund
was used to provide a splendid dinner for the monks in the monastery. But as
time went on and inflation took its toll, there was only enough money for a
small snack. The large gift had over the years become a pittance. It is not
only inflation that measures the size of our gifts. They are also to be
measured by the resources from which we give, and by what we have left after we
give. So the widow's mite in the gospels was what we would call a pittance, but
Jesus reckoned that it was a substantial and splendid gift.