Scripture Reflections

MOTIVATION FOR DOING WORKS OF CHARITY

SCRIPTURE READINGS: 2 COR 9:6-11; MT 6:1-6. 16-18

As Christians, we all know that works of charity is an essential component of our faith.  As St James tells us, “Faith without good works is dead.”  (cf James 2:14-18)  Yet, it is not enough that we do good works.  We must examine the motives for doing good works as this will determine how we go about being involved in charity work.  It is not sufficient that we help the poor, but also know why we do it, because the whys determine the goal of charity both with respect to the one who gives and the one who receives. 

So what is the motivation for doing charity work?  There are those who give alms for the sake of ostentatiousness.  They would like to put up a big show.  They like to be known for their generosity and as philanthropists.  Such people are deeply insecure people. It is certainly both psychologically and spiritually unhealthy if one needs to be seen and praised for what one is doing.  It means that such actions do not originate from a person’s inner convictions.  Such a person does not have a center and will eventually destroy his health because he is always too worried about public opinion.  He is under the control of people’s expectations.  He is never sure of himself.  He loses focus and is a prisoner of his low self-esteem.

Then there are those who perform charity work in condescension.  They wear a superiority complex much like the Pharisees and the Scribes that Jesus condemned in the gospel.  They despise others.  The charity they give only makes the recipients feel worse and humiliated.  Instead of helping them to regain their dignity, we rob them of the little dignity they have left.  No one likes to feel as if he or she is a beggar.  Even a beggar has his dignity.  True charity does not make the recipient feel worse about himself but loved and accepted for the condition he or she is in.  It is not about sympathy but empathy.

Then there are those who give to charity as a form of investment, whether material or spiritual investment.  The more worldly ones use the poor as a kind of investment for they believe that the more they give to the poor, the more they will receive in return.  It is based on the prosperity gospel that since God cannot be outdone in generosity, they give expecting to receive double or even more.  This apparently seems to be the motive suggested by St Paul in the first reading. He wrote, “Do not forget: thin sowing means thin reaping; the more you sow, the more you reap.”  He added, “And there is no limit to the blessings which God can send you – he will make sure that you will always have all you need for yourselves in every possible circumstance, and still have something to spare for all sorts of good works.”  What St Paul says of course is true, but not in the worldly sense of seeking to make good investments.  Such ulterior and selfish motive of giving is not what St Paul is encouraging.  Rather, he was speaking about the need to trust in divine providence and that the blessings God gives are more than just material gains but the joys of love, faith, friends and meaning.

Then there are those who do charity because of pressure, guilt, fear and punishment.  They give reluctantly. St Paul speaks of the necessity of being a cheerful giver.  He wrote, “Each one should give what he has decided in his own mind, not grudgingly or because he is made to, for God loves a cheerful giver.”  If we are motivated by guilt, as many do, especially those who have so much money and the things of this earth but splurge all on themselves.  So they are giving not out of compassion for the poor, or because they see God’s face in them, but simply to soothe their guilt and conscience.  They are also afraid that if they do not share their resources with others, bad karma will fall upon them either on this earth or they will be punished in the next life.  Hence, charity is squeezed out of them.

Finally, some are motivated by ideology and particularly with a political agenda.  Their works of charity are basically driven by a humanitarian motive.  Most of the time, it is rooted in their compassion for the poor and the suffering.  Unfortunately, in the face of apparent failure in rectifying the situation, they become resentful of the injustices of the institutions.  In their anger at the injustices of the world, they champion certain ideological doctrines about how justice should be carried out.  At times, they adopt Marxist approaches to justice and promote materialism and even communism.

Against such imperfect motives in charity, the scripture readings of today provide us the Christian motives for giving.   Firstly, giving is based on the fact that God loves us.  We are grateful to God for blessing us and hence because God loves us, we too want to love others as well and share His blessings with others.  So giving, for a Christian, is done out of pure gratitude for His love.  It is a doing primarily for God and not for show or for attention.  There is no need to as God has given us all the attention by providing us our needs.  We are already loved by Him and so we do not need to seek the love of the world.  Hence, we do not take pride in our generosity but rather we want to boast of God’s goodness to us.

Secondly, it comes from our identification with our poor brothers and sisters.  This identification comes from fasting.  The Lord invites us to fast so that we can feel with the poor.  Quite often, many of us cannot feel with the poor even though we are giving to them because we have not gone through the sufferings, anxieties and fears they go through.  Hence, even when helping the poor, we do not really identify with them.  Sometimes, those who help the poor do it perfunctorily, as if it is a duty and task without feelings. For this reason, it is not enough to be the Church for the poor but we must be the Church of the poor.  Unless, we know our own poverty, we cannot enrich others and identify with them.

Thirdly, we want to give them Jesus.  This must be the real reason for giving and helping. We need to let them know that Jesus loves them.  By our works of charity, we are not simply offering material help but more importantly, through our tangible love, we want to assure them that God loves them still, even in their poverty and suffering.  At the end of the day, no amount of material help can ever satisfy a person’s heart.  Only God can fill the emptiness of our lives.   We need love, security, peace and joy.  So the ultimate purpose of giving is to give them Jesus, seen in and through us.   For this reason, Jesus says that we must do good so that we can give glory to God the Father.

When we give from such motives, what would be our reward?  We receive a greater joy and meaning in life that the world cannot give.  The blessings we seek are not of this world but the joys of the kingdom of God which come from love, unity and selfless service.  There is nothing that this world can replace more than a deeper relationship with the Lord, compassion for our fellowmen, being one with them and with the Lord.  This is what gives us the greatest joy.  Indeed, I am a priest today precisely because of the joy of service to my brothers and sisters.  In a certain sense, I am the richest person I could possibly be, for what greater riches can one have than the capacity to give, share and to love?  If one cannot love and cannot give, he is truly a miserable man.

The paradox of giving is that the more you give, the more capacity the Lord will give you to give.  The more you forget yourself in the service of others as Jesus tells us in the gospel, the more you will find yourself.  It is for this reason that the secret of happiness is to do everything in secret, that is, focused not on self but on others.  Hence, Jesus’ advice is this, “your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.”  By so doing, we preserve our own dignity and also the dignity of those who serve.  There is more joy when we give spontaneously and selflessly without thinking of ourselves than worrying about what others may think about us.  Indeed, contemplating on Jesus who gave Himself totally to us is the key to truly give ourselves selflessly to others.  Only in Him alone can we find the strength to give and to empty ourselves.

Written by Most Rev Msgr William Goh
Archbishop of Singapore
© All Rights Reserved
___________________________

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Catholic Spirituality Centre Singapore

Best Practices for Using the Daily Scripture Reflections

1. Encounter God through the spirit of prayer and the scripture by reflecting and praying the Word of God daily. The purpose is to bring you to prayer and to a deeper union with the Lord on the level of the heart.
2. Daily reflections when archived will lead many to accumulate all the reflections of the week and pray in one sitting. This will compromise your capacity to enter deeply into the Word of God, as the tendency is to read for knowledge rather than a prayerful reading of the Word for the purpose of developing a personal and affective relationship with the Lord.
3. It is more important to pray deeply, not read widely. The current reflections of the day would be more than sufficient for anyone who wants to pray deeply and be led into an intimacy with the Lord.

CHARITY ORIGINATES FROM OUR REALIZATION OF OUR SONSHIP

SCRIPTURE READINGS: 2 CORINTHIANS 8:1-9;  MT 5:43-48

The teachings of Jesus are not easy to digest.  In the gospel, He challenged His disciples: to “love those who love you, what right have you to claim any credit?  Even the tax collectors do as much, do they not?”  Indeed, we are not doing anything extraordinary by being kind and good to those who are good to us, for, as Jesus said, “Even the pagans do as much, do they not?“   As if this was not controversial enough,  Jesus went further to demand of His disciples, “You have learnt how it was said: You must love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” This is an even more difficult demand.  To be kind and generous to strangers and those who have done nothing for us is already a tall order, but to love our enemies – even if we wanted to, we cannot!  If anything else, our enemies should be thankful that we did not take revenge on them.  But to love them, emotionally it is unthinkable and morally, it is beyond our will.

If we are feeling distressed at what Jesus is asking of us, we can be very certain that even the disciples of Jesus were shocked, not only by the way He taught but by what He taught, for He was going against the demands of justice as understood in the Law of Moses, where the principle of ‘an eye for an eye’ was applied.  Of course, what Moses taught the rebellious Israelites, who were still infantile in their faith, was understandable.  But this would not be the way to true love and freedom.  If Christ appeared to be so demanding, it was because He wanted us to attain the lasting joy and love of the Father.  That is why He backed up His demands by urging us to love in the way He taught us, then “you will be sons of your Father in heaven, for he causes his sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest men alike” and “be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

But who are we?  We can excuse ourselves and say that we are only sinners and human beings.  No one can be perfect like the Heavenly Father is perfect.   No one can love like the Father loves.   So we are doomed to misery and unhappiness.  But this objection appears not to be valid.  For in the first reading we read of how the Christians in Macedonia, in spite of their “great trials by suffering”, remained in “their constant cheerfulness”; and how in spite of “their intense poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity.”  But that is not all, St Paul vouched “that they gave not only as much as they could afford, but far more, and quite spontaneously, begging and begging us for the favour of sharing in this service to the saints and, what was quite unexpected, they offered their own selves first to God and, under God, to us.”

Similarly, in yesterday’s first reading, St Paul, too, shared the attitudes of Christ that he and his fellow apostles themselves had cultivated.  He did not simply use his ecclesiastical authority when he wrote to the rebellious Christians in Corinthians, some of whom were challenging his authority.  Instead, he appealed to his moral authority when he wrote, “we prove we are servants of God by great fortitude in times of suffering:  in times of hardship and distress; when we are flogged, or sent to prison, or mobbed; labouring, sleepless, starving.  We prove we are God’s servants by our purity, knowledge, patience and kindness; by spirit of holiness, by a love free from affection; by the word of truth and by the power of God; by being armed with the weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left, prepared for honour or disgrace, for blame or praise; taken for impostors while we are genuine; obscure yet famous; said to be dying and here are we alive; rumoured to be executed before we are sentenced; thought most miserable and yet we are always rejoicing; taken for paupers though we make others rich, for people having nothing though we have  everything.”  (2 Cor 6:4-10)

How did the Christians in Macedonia become so generous, patient and selfless in charity, not just in forgiveness but in concrete acts of love by sharing their goods?   How many of us can be so generous as to give when we can hardly survive with what we have?  The generosity of the widow’s mite in the gospel is rare among us.  In fact, most of us would justify ourselves by saying that we do not have sufficient money to sustain ourselves and should therefore be exempted from giving to the poor, not just within our Christian community, but outside of our community.   And to speak about being cheerful in our trials and forgiving towards those who have caused us suffering, especially because of our faith, we are far from being so magnanimous.  If there is any goodness in us, it would be merely anger and the decision to cut them off from our lives forever.

If we compare ourselves to St Paul, we pale like a candle in the light of the sun.  I doubt if we would be able to say that we have “proven ourselves as worthy servants”!  Far from living a life of integrity and selflessness, our giving to the Lord and His people is so limited.  More often than not, we serve the people of God like the way pagans love one another.  We are good to those who are good to us.  Our love is not an unconditional love but one that is merely a response to the prior love that we have received from others, or otherwise, when we do something good for others, we tacitly expect gratitude, not just in words but sometimes even in deeds.  Our love is so shallow, and we have the audacity to call that “Christian love”!   And surely, very few of us would be so persevering under persecution, ridicule or when misunderstood for our good intentions.  If we do not curse our oppressors or the ingrates, they should be thankful!  Obviously we do not want to seriously believe that Jesus truly expects us to act on His words, when He said, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”.  Most likely, we would just gloss over these words of the gospel when we read them.

What then is the secret of sharing in the heart of God, in His compassion towards sinners and in His love for all, regardless of whether they are sinners or saints? We are told that the Christians knew Christ personally.  They had meditated on the love of Christ who gave His life for us on the Cross.  Isn’t this how St Paul exhorted the Christians?  “Remember how generous the Lord Jesus was: he was rich, but he became poor for your sake, to make you rich out of his poverty.”  Unless we come to grasp His selfless mercy and love for us, we can never do what He did.

Secondly, we must count our blessings and be grateful for what we have received.  St Paul told the Christians, “You always have the most of everything – of faith, of eloquence, of understanding, of keenness for any cause, and the biggest share of our affection – so we expect you to put the most into this work of mercy too.”   Ingratitude is the cause of the lack of charity and forgiveness.  Until we come to realize how much we have offended the Lord our God in greater and more unpardonable ways, we cannot extend forgiveness to our enemies.  Indeed, we have received not only God’s forgiveness, but we have received so many blessings from Him, health, wealth, comfort, the care and love for our family members and friends, and most of all, the gift of faith to encourage us on in life each day.  How can we be so forgetful of God’s love for us?  We should be like the psalmist in the responsorial psalm saying, Praise the Lord, my soul! I will praise the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God while I live.” Of course, this praise must be expressed in our relationship with our fellowmen by words of love and forgiveness and acts of love and service.

At the root of it all, the only way for us to love the way Jesus and St Paul loved their enemies, is to be filled with the love of God.  Without God’s love in our hearts, we cannot love with the love of the Father.  The command of Jesus to love like the Father and forgive like the Father presupposes that we are truly His sons and daughters, not just in name, but in fact.  This is implied in this verse, “in this way you will be sons of your Father in heaven, for he causes his sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest men alike.”  Hence, before the resurrection, the disciples could not live out the commands of Jesus.  But after the resurrection, and with the reception of the Holy Spirit, they were able to go out to the world to impart forgiveness when the Lord said to,them, “Receive the Holy Spirit, for those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.”  (Jn 20:22).  We, who have received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and at our baptism, and as adopted sons and daughters of God, too, can love like His children.  This precisely is what a renewal of the Holy Spirit in our hearts does for us.  He is the “love of God poured into our hearts” (Rom 5:5).

Written by Most Rev Msgr William Goh
Archbishop of Singapore
© All Rights Reserved
___________________________

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Catholic Spirituality Centre Singapore

Best Practices for Using the Daily Scripture Reflections

1. Encounter God through the spirit of prayer and the scripture by reflecting and praying the Word of God daily. The purpose is to bring you to prayer and to a deeper union with the Lord on the level of the heart.
2. Daily reflections when archived will lead many to accumulate all the reflections of the week and pray in one sitting. This will compromise your capacity to enter deeply into the Word of God, as the tendency is to read for knowledge rather than a prayerful reading of the Word for the purpose of developing a personal and affective relationship with the Lord.
3. It is more important to pray deeply, not read widely. The current reflections of the day would be more than sufficient for anyone who wants to pray deeply and be led into an intimacy with the Lord.