Second Sunday of Lent

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
17th March 2019

The True Sense of Almsgiving by Rev. Fr. Conrad Pepler O.P.

As an essential part of Lenten observance, alms deeds are intended as an act of religion, a sacrificial act of worship. The Christian gives something of himself to his fellow as an outward sign of his self-dedication to God. "Religion clean and undefiled", says St. James, "is to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation: and to keep one's self unspotted from this world". Like a religious sacrifice, almsgiving may be performed for the satisfaction of past sins. St. Thomas Aquinas points out that: "In so far as it is ordained to placate God, it has the nature of a sacrifice and thus it is inspired by worship" (S.T. IIa IIae, q. 32, a. 1).

The purpose of religion is the worship of God. Religion that intends only the worship of man is no religion. And yet there is another motive for beneficence which, good in its place, has been allowed to grow out of all proportion so that now we see in our day what has been called the religion of philanthropy. The driving force of the philanthropist is mercy. He sees the sufferings of the sick and poor and is filled with compassion and sympathy. But he goes no deeper than that. He does not see the presence of God in his suffering neighbour. He sees the poor man, not as a brother, but as a lower type dependent on him. And so, the poor are kept at a distance; they belong to a different world from his. The truly merciful man sees God in those who are poor and suffering, and he draws them close to himself that he may be identified with them. The merciful man thus "brings the needy and the harbourless into his house and despises not his own flesh". Thus, true mercy flows from charity.

But there are different standards of almsgiving. Those who are "well off" may give of their abundance without feeling any personal loss. Such people do not have to deal or break their own bread with the hungry; they have loaves that they do not need. But some give of their substance; they deal their bread with the hungry.

Until the (Protestant) Reformation came to change man's attitude to worldly wealth, it was a common doctrine that men were obliged in justice to give away what they did not require for themselves, their family or their station in life. To give ten percent of one's superfluous income to a hospital was no pious work of supererogation. The bare equalising of the scales of natural law demanded the giving of all that was over and above one's needs, all that would otherwise be spent on luxuries. The Publicans, and pagans, ought to go so far as that. St. Thomas Aquinas was no innovator when he wrote: "Those things which one has in superabundance are due by natural law to the poor for their subsistence". It was early realised that alms of this sort were gifts because a person, although bound to dispose of the goods, could choose how to dispose of them. It is this spirit of charity that Our Lord teaches us; it is not the charity of the alms-house and the dole, but the charity that extends to all men with a spontaneous burst of love that no power can restrain.