Wednesday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, June 15, 2022

Matthew 6, 1-6, 16-18

Jesus said to his disciples: “Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.  When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to others to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.”

These sets of verses from the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, used for today’s Mass, remind us that our devotional practices are for God alone.  We keep our spiritual lives hidden so that it is only God and us.  Fasting, almsgiving, and praying are acts of intimacy with Jesus.  We share in his life through them, and he works in us through them.  Performing these deeds in a way that allowed others to see them spoiled them, so to speak.  The bright light of a public show withered the fruits of these deeds.  Some devotional actions do take place in public, such as saying grace before meals at a restaurant or handing money to a beggar on the street.  But when we perform them, the actions are discreet.  They do not interrupt the business in which we are otherwise engaged.  We can accomplish this by making these actions natural to us through repetition.  Thus, we perform them quickly and without fuss.  Fasting, strictly a penitential work, can be by others only by our telling them.  This defeats one of the effects of fasting, the building up of our self-discipline through ostentation.  

In regards to our devotions, we ought to think of the Lord’s words, “No one can serve two masters” (Matthew 6, 24).  That is, we can serve ourselves or our God.  We serve ourselves through self-indulgence and flaunting our neediness in order to gain attention and consolation.  We serve our God by forgetting ourselves in carrying out his will — giving alms, for example.  We must truly see him as our Master, and that we have a duty in serving and worshipping him.  As our Master, he has the power of life and death over us, but as a Master who loves us so much that he sent his Son to die for us, we know that he has our best interests at heart.  The commandments and the daily inspirations he sends us benefit other people, but principally ourselves.  In carrying out his commandments we become strong in faith and by the devotions he inspires us to act on, we become holy.

Living in this way, with our love of Jesus at the core of our interior life, we make sanctity look natural, simple, and beautiful.  “And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.”