First, by providing the widows with food, shelter and basic care, the early Christians honored their equal dignity as human beings. Second, the members of the church did not content themselves with meeting those needs from a safe distance. By incorporating the widows into their ongoing communal life, the early Christians recognized that they all shared a common identity as brothers and sisters in Christ. Instead, they pushed beyond bare inclusion toward active participation by discerning ways in which the widows themselves could make an invaluable contribution to the common good. In so doing, the church forged an innovative form of social unity.
Good health affects individuals and the communities in which they live.
Conversely, serious or prolonged illness or disability threatens to destroy this threefold integration by alienating us from our bodies, the surrounding society and our calling. The three ways solidarity was practiced by the early church through its order of widows challenges us to identify and overcome the disintegration that illness can bring to elderly women's personal, social and vocational lives. First, serious illness or disability frequently threatens to dissolve a person's experience of psychosomatic unity and the goodness of human embodiment as her malfunctioning body pits itself against a mind that desires to continue living and moving. The internally divisive experience of illness exacerbates the tendencies of contemporary Western cultures to fall into one of two forms of dualism. On the one hand, some people are tempted to identify their true selves exclusively with an inner, non-material core rather than with the whole physical, mental and spiritual complex that makes up a human person.