Dear Saints,

Most of us are willing to be generous for a time. We give cheerfully and without expecting repayment…until we don’t. At some point, one of two things tends to happen to us: resentment or escape.

Sometimes when we give, we secretly do start to expect repayment. Maybe we don’t want like-for-like, but we want something all the same: recognition, adulation, perhaps a sense of indebtedness. And when we don’t get our due (as defined by us), bitterness starts to build within our hearts and minds.

And sometimes when we give, we do so with the comforting thought that we only have to go so far. We tell ourselves that after giving, we can reward ourselves with a nice meal or some other treat. Perhaps an extended break from the recipients of our generosity!

But Jesus never knew resentment, and he never had an escape hatch. His generosity never stopped: he constantly elevated the needs of others above his own, knowing full well that he would never - could never - be repaid.

The Lenten discipline of almsgiving is one small step in his direction. By giving away our money and time in a season that’s already marked by other sacrifice, we become a little more like him every day.

Certainly those to whom we give alms profit from our actions. But we’re the primary beneficiaries of the practice, because it stretches our generosity past the limits we tend to impose on it. Our hearts become unburdened by resentment and unconcerned with thoughts of when we get to stop. In essence, almsgiving is the act of loving through and beyond our self-concern into that place where only love remains. And who wouldn’t want to live there.

Christ’s Peace,

Father Daniel

δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ