Homily: Wednesday, 11th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Cor 9:6-11; Ps 112; Mt 6:1-6


Jesus sure can make life difficult, can’t He? He doesn’t even want us to take credit for the good we do. As an agnostic friend once told me, “What good is it to do good if you can’t look good?”

Really now, we invest time, money, and energy into all those good works…and a little credit isn’t much to ask for, some praise for a job well done. Maybe you helped out someone in dire need, or cooked a meal at the soup kitchen, or gave a nice big check to Food for the Poor, or spent a weekend hammering nails for Habitat for Humanity. Does God really mean that we shouldn’t let people know how well we followed the Sermon on the Mount? Shouldn’t we show people how good Christians like ourselves love our neighbor?

Well, no…because in each of these instances, when we publicize our goodness, we run the risk of placing ourselves ahead of God. Just why do you love your neighbor?…assuming that you do. Because it makes you feel good to help them? Or because others will think better of you? Or maybe you hope you can buy your way into heaven? All the usual reasons, but all bad reasons.

You see, brothers and sisters, we love our neighbor because God commands it. He commands us to do good because doing so gives glory to Him. That’s it. That’s the reason.

St. Therese

St. Therese, the Little Flower, once wrote: “Offer God the sacrifice of never gathering any fruit off your tree.” What a wonderful way of summarizing Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel passage. Yes, do the good that God asks of you, but do it quietly.  And by doing so, you just might shed another layer of ego. What difference does it make whether or not anyone knows what you’ve done? God knows, and He’s the only one who counts.

The medieval rabbis used to say that the most perfect form of almsgiving is when the giver doesn’t know to whom he’s giving, and the receiver doesn’t who did the giving. Such an act of giving separates the act itself from the desires of the self. And if another person gets the credit, and this separation widens, all the better. You will have experienced simple goodness – goodness without gratitude, or recognition, or acclaim.  

St. Bonaventure

When he prayed, St. Bonaventure used the words, “O Bonitas!” – Oh, Goodness – over and over again, for this was his name for God: Goodness. Bonaventure, as did his saintly contemporaries, believed that “It is the nature of goodness to pour itself out!” They believed this is why God created: He is goodness personified and He poured Himself out by creating the world and every one of us. And so, when you and I do something simply because it is good, and not to please or reward ourselves, we are truly acting Godlike.

Jesus gives us this teaching because He knows how difficult it can be for us to let go of that self. And so Jesus, to help us give God all the glory, tells us to do our good works quietly and humbly… or as St. Therese would say, never gather any fruit off your own tree.

Is this difficult? Oh, my, yes. Jesus sums it all up by saying, “…the one who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted." This, of course, runs counter to the very core of our fallen human nature and the desire that almost compels us to push ourselves forward and upward. That pesky ego keeps getting in the way of developing a proper relationship with God.

And so, brothers and sisters, it’s not sinfulness alone that will keep us out of the Kingdom. If that were the case, none of us would come to salvation. What we do is certainly important, but often why and how we do it are more important. For Jesus knows we are all sinners. That’s why He began His public ministry by saying quite simply, “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”

If we approach God with repentance and an awareness of our sinfulness, we are then more open to the Gospel message. For Jesus is always ready to teach us how to be His disciples. He’s always ready to teach us to give of ourselves, not out of human admiration and need for respect, but from the fire of His love.

And then we can write that donation check. Or we can cook that meal and share it joyfully with the hungry and the homeless. Or we can stretch our muscles by helping to build that house. We can be the extraordinary minister of Holy Communion or proclaim God’s Word to His People, and we can do all these things with hearts filled with thanksgiving and humility, focused on one goal: to give glory to God.