When I heard the Gospel today, I absolutely thought about the violence suffered by the kingdom when I heard about the judge’s fear of the widow coming to strike him!

I’ve always leaned more towards Augustine’s path to the spiritual meaning: the words signify things and the things (authored by God) have a meaning we call spiritual. Origen’s method, though followed by other Church Fathers, seems to risk relativizing historical meaning. For him, this is probably not as great a danger as missing the spiritual fruit (and he’s probably right), but it’s still a danger better avoided.

Anyway, very thoughtful look at all the readings!