Now she that is a widow indeed, and desolate, trusts in God, and continues in supplications and prayers night and day.
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Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
And you, O widow, find those who will pray for you. If as a true widow and desolate you hope in God, continue constant in supplications. Persist in prayers. Treat your body as dying daily, that by dying you may live again. Avoid pleasures, that you, too, being sick, may be healed.
When the Lord exhorted us to pray always and not to faint, he told of the widow whose continuous appeal brought a wicked and impious judge, who scorned both God and man, to hear her cause. From this it can be easily understood how widows, beyond all others, have the duty of applying themselves to prayer, since an example was taken from widows to encourage us all to develop a love of prayer. But, in a practice of such importance, what characteristic of widows is singled out but their poverty and desolation? Therefore, insofar as every soul understands that it is poor and desolate in this world, as long as it is absent from the Lord, it surely commends its widowhood, so to speak, to God its defender, with continual and most earnest prayer. –.
The church is called Christ’s widow, because she is stripped of all worldly help and places her hope solely in the Lord. Like a widow, she suffers the shameful actions of evil men, the most cruel plunderings of the wicked. Like a woman deprived of a husband’s aid, she always grieves and is always worn out, yet she enjoys the unchanging steadfastness of a most chaste mind…. She is called a widow because she is bereft of worldly protection and has placed her hope in her heavenly Bridegroom, who has transformed her swarthiness into beauty, her error into uprightness, her cruelty into devotion and her frailty into total constancy.
She that is a widow indeed, and desolate, (destitute of help, as the Greek word implieth) may be maintained; and then let her be constant in prayers and devotions night and day. (Witham)
Every Christian soul is a widow of Jesus Christ, who has been forcibly torn from her: and in her communications with heaven she ought to offer up an afflicted and humbled heart
the heart of a widow. It is thus she will avoid the dangers of the world, and secure true life in unchangeable felicity. (Haydock)
A widow who has ceased to have a husband to please, and who in the apostle’s language is a widow indeed, needs nothing more earnestly than perseverance. Remembering past enjoyments, she knows what gave her pleasure and what she has now lost. By rigid fasting and vigils she must quench the fiery darts of the devil.
To whom is this said? To those who have no children, because they are more highly approved and have a greater opportunity of pleasing God, because all their chains are loosened to them. There is no one to hold them fast, no one to compel them to drag their chains after them. You are separated from your husband but are united to God. You have not a fellow servant for your associate, but you have your Lord.
She who being a widow has not made choice of a worldly life, is a widow indeed; she who trusts in God as she ought, and continues instant in prayer night and day, is a widow indeed. Not that she, who has children, is not a widow indeed. For he commends her who brings up children as she ought. But if any one has not children, he means, she is desolate, and her he consoles, saying, that she is most truly a widow, who has lost not only the consolation of a husband, but that arising from children, yet she has God in the place of all. She is not the worse for not having children, but He fills up her need with consolation, in that she is without children. What he says amounts to this. Grieve not, when it is said that a widow ought to bring up children, as if, because you have no children your worth were on that account inferior. You are a widow indeed, whereas she who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives.
But since many who have children choose the state of widowhood, not to cut off ...
But if any one has no children, he means, she is desolate. Her he especially consoles, saying that she is most truly a widow who has lost not only the consolation of a husband but that arising from children, yet she has God in the place of all.
