Monthly Archives: August 2014

5. (Mt 6:4) “But when thou givest alms, do not let thy left hand know what thy right hand is doing, so that they alms may be given in secret; and thy Father, who sees in secret, will reward thee.”

 Everything we have to give as alms, and even the urge to give alms are gifts from our Heavenly Father.  But we are still hiding from Our Father “among the trees” (Gen 3:8) and trying to cover our nakedness with fig leaves (Gen 3:7).  Because we are made in His Image, we are inclined to imitate Our Father (Who is Self-Giving Love) by giving alms.  But we have forgotten Our Source because acknowledging Him requires acknowledging our nakedness and dependence on Him.  So we want our action of giving alms to make us appear beautifully clothed, godlike, and independent in the eyes of other people.  Part of this charade is convincing ourselves of our own independent goodness which is why Jesus says, “Do not let thy left hand know what thy right hand is doing” (Mt 6:3).  Rather than acting “in order to be seen” (Mt 6:1) by others, we should act to be seen by Our Heavenly Father “Who sees in secret” (Mt 6:6) and Who loves us totally despite our naked sinfulness.  He has prepared new “garments of skin” (Gen 3:21) for us, desiring to clothe us in His Beloved Son, Jesus (Gal 3:27) and “with Power from on High” (Lk 24:49).

4. (Mt 6:1) “Take heed not to do your good before men, in order to be seen by them; otherwise you shall have no reward with your Father in heaven.”

 Earlier in the same Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had said, “Let your light shine before men, in order that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in Heaven” (Mt 5:14).  The difference is in the motive and in the result.  In both cases good works are being done openly, but we have a choice to do our good works to glorify the Father (since we are unable to do anything good except by His Gift), or to glorify ourselves (by trying to get other people to notice our goodness).

The fact is that just as we frequently misjudge the motives of others, so they frequently misjudge ours.  Even if it were possible to get people to notice and think that we are good, it is very silly to try to do so, because we have no goodness either in being or action except what we have received from Our Father.  So glorifying ourselves is a form of lying which leaves us sad and disconnected.  On the other hand if we do good in order to praise Our Father and to lead others to recognize His Goodness, then we are filled with joy because “One there is Who is good, and He is God” (Mt 19:16).  This joy is the “reward that we receive from Our Father in Heaven” (Mt 6:1) because when we let our light shine before men in order to glorify Him, our souls also are illuminated with a deeper awareness of the Father and His magnificent Love (which is the origin and goal of our existence).

3.  “You therefore are to be perfect, even as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48).

 According to Father Michael Ciccone, OP, in the original language the word which in this verse is translated into English as “perfect” has the meaning of total self- giving love.  This total self-giving love is our vocation as masculine and feminine persons created in God’s image.

To love our enemies is above our nature–it requires grace; but we do not like to be vulnerable and dependent on grace.  And yet we need to receive a continual flow of God’s grace into our souls if we are going to continue to love our enemies.  It’s clear that to be perfect as Our Heavenly Father is perfect requires us to become ever more vulnerable to God’s grace and ever more dependent on His Fatherhood.

Here is where Our Lady can help us.  If we consecrate ourselves to Her Immaculate Heart, then from within this Sanctuary of the Holy Spirit we can pray, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word” (Lk 1:38).  She who was “clothed with power from on high (Lk 24:49) at the Annunciation (Lk 1:35) and again at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4), like the good Mother who She is, desires to clothe us in Her own vulnerability and receptivity to the Word.

2. “But I say to you, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute and calumniate you, so that you may be children of Your Father in Heaven, who makes His sun to rise on the good and the evil, and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Mt 5:44-45).

 The Father desires to Gift each person with His Eternal Son and the refreshing Reign of His Holy Spirit.  Our supernatural lives depend on our opening to receive these Gifts, just as our natural lives depend on the sun and the rain.  If we who have received the Son and the Spirit through our Baptism refuse to love our enemies, then we cut ourselves off from Our Father Who is Love (1 Jn 4:8), and we close the Door of Love that the Father wanted to open to our enemies.  We hold the key to this Door which opens through the astonishment which occurs when our enemies realize that we love them no matter what they do to us.

1. “Even so let your light shine before men, in order that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Mt 5:16).

This first mention of the Father by Name in the New Testament shows us how Jesus came to reverse the effects of original sin.

Jesus, later in the same Sermon on the Mount, will say that, “Every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit” (Mt 7:17).  People seeing the good fruit in our lives are attracted to the tree.  Unlike the fruit of the” tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen 3:9), which also appeared good, but led to the glorification of man in place of God (i.e. death), the fruit of those who do good works so that the Father may be glorified always leads to life.   When our Good Father is known and glorified in His True Nature then we find again the purpose of our existence as His beloved sons and daughters.  This is the Light that “the Light of the World” (Jn 8:12) came to bring to us so that we could in turn spread its radiance everywhere.