They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext,
recite lengthy prayers.
Religiosity can be used as a cloak to hide a selfish and egotistical life. We may desire to be seen as religious in the eyes of others so that we can cultivate a spiritual self image with no obvious cracks in the seams. This sort of religiosity is only concerned with the appearance of things, the form of religion but not the power (see Second Timothy 3:5).
If our prayers are not accompanied by our hearts increasing in compassion for the houses of widows and others in need then there is something deficient in our prayers. We may indeed be using our prayers to distract us from a lack of motivation to love others. Does this mean that the externals necessarily need to change? It might. But more than that, it means that we need to adjust the internal direction of our intentions to be more God focused and less self focused. For if we allow ourselves to encounter God in prayer compassion for the orphan and the widow will come as a matter of course. If we allow ourselves contact with the living water of the Holy Spirit than his fruits will begin to grow in us.
A practical point, less introspective, is that those who are overly interested in appearing religious to us may not be the best guides in the spiritual life. Those who seem more interested in the spotlight than in sanctification, who cultivate appearance rather than authenticity, may look religious from the outside but lacking the charity without which they are just "a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal", nothing, and gaining nothing (see First Corinthians 13). Usually the ratio of charity to ego isn't all or nothing, and no one masters it perfectly in this life. If a desire for God is seen to be valued above a need to be esteemed by others this is at least a good sign.
The wrong response to this concern about external religiosity would be to abandon religion to focus entirely on social service. Without God there are all sorts of ways this could go wrong. Without God such service could become just another occasion to cultivate a self image we like, still not motivated by true compassion for others. Lacking compassion will mean that we will go so far and no further in our willingness to help. When the benefit to our pride is outweighed by the effort involved we will excuse ourselves. Without God, the overwhelming intractability of the problems of poverty and want in the world could easily lead to cynicism or despair. To actually keep one's heart open and vulnerable in the face of such challenges is something we can only do with God's help.
It is better to give alms than to store up gold;
for almsgiving saves one from death and expiates every sin.
Those who regularly give alms shall enjoy a full life;
but those habitually guilty of sin are their own worst enemies.
The world's programs of social justice request vast scale, organization, and are meaningful only insofar as they are successful. Like everything the world does, those programs are predicated on the belief that life ends at death and are designed to maximize the pleasure of the majority for as long as possible. Giving alms is not like this. The word alms comes down to us from the Greek for compassion. It is a compassion that is meaningful in the first place, not because of our success, but because it is a concrete act that entrusts another to God's mercy more than our own, that enters into God's own compassion for others. When we give alms we don't need to worry about the limitations of our abilities provided that we really are giving fundamentally for the sake of God, and entrusting the results to his providence.
“Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more
than all the other contributors to the treasury.
For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth,
but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had,
her whole livelihood.”
The widow's gift can serve as a thought experiment for us. If we were only able to give two small coins would we refuse because it didn't serve to build up our self image? We should instead learn from the famous line of Saint Teresa of Calcutta, who wrote that "God doesn't ask that we succeed in everything, but that we are faithful." She herself was inspired, by the Little Flower, and this is easy to see in her writings.
Jesus wills that we give alms to Him as to one poor and needy. He puts Himself as it were at our mercy; He will take nothing but what we give Him from our heart, and the very least trifle is precious in His sight.- Saint Therese of Lisieux
To the mind of Therese the more hidden the gift the better. Large gifts would easily give rise to pride. Small gifts wrested away from our selfishness for love's sake count infinitely more. It is better to allow ourselves to be small so that God can be great in us, to decrease that Jesus may increase. This is not to say that those with great means ought not give lavishly, for there is surely reward in that. But insofar as magnanimity is a gift that they have been given to offer to others they will need to be especially careful that it not be twisted by the enemy to pervert it from the purposes of love.
No comments:
Post a Comment