In this Gospel, Christ
says our Father will recompense, reward, or repay us when we offer the secret,
righteous deeds of almsgiving, prayer and fasting for our Father alone.
Prayer deals with our
Father.
Almsgiving deals with
my neighbor.
Fasting deals with my own self.
Our Father, my
neighbor, my self— the three kinds of personal relationship I can have.
Although fasting,
almsgiving and prayer turn in three different directions— myself, my neighbor,
my God— Christ says our Father will repay them only if my goal in all three
directions is our Father alone.
Our Father does not
repay when I show off my fasting, my alms or my prayer so that others will pat
me on the back.
Even letting “your
left hand know what your right is doing” is another way of saying “patting
your own self on the back.”
Christ underscores
secrecy in our seeking the Father.
Today’s Gospel is a
three-part litany of secrecy with the Father in almsgiving, secrecy with the
Father in prayer and secrecy with the Father in fasting.
It has all the makings
of intimacy.
When I secretly give
alms, I make myself materially vulnerable and avoid having others support my
vulnerability by patting me on the back.
Christ tells me to
offer my material vulnerability secretly to the Father for his support alone.
When I pray all by
myself, I avoid the social support of neighbors, so I am socially vulnerable.
Christ tells me to
offer my social vulnerability secretly to the Father for his support alone.
When I fast, I make
myself physically vulnerable.
Christ tells me to
offer my physical vulnerability secretly to the Father for his support alone.
Secret almsgiving,
prayer and fasting— material, social and physical vulnerability in secret
with the Father— these are the all-embracing, natural and supernatural makings
for real and deep intimacy with God.
In his own Body and
Blood, Christ makes himself vulnerable materially, socially and physically.
In the Eucharistic
Sacrifice of his Body and Blood, Christ makes himself into a saving alms for
our poverty, into a prayer interceding for us to the Father, and even into a fast-unto-death-on-the-cross that he offers on our behalf to the Father.
By raising him from
the dead, and exalting him to his side in the intimate depths and heights of heaven, our Father has repaid Christ
for his vulnerability.
If we follow Christ in his intimate pursuit of our heavenly Father, we open ourselves to begin to receive even now the same repayment Christ received: being intimately at home with our heavenly Father.
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be. [Matthew 6:19-21]
