Ash Wednesday — 26th February 2020 — Mt 6,1-6.16-18
Right deed, Right reason
For dutiful Jews, righteousness also encompassed a number of pious practices – the giving of alms, prayer, and fasting. The connection is already made in the OT, e.g. Tob 12,8 – “Prayer is good when accompanied by fasting, almsgiving, and righteousness.” The three devotional practices contrast between the bad practice and the good practice. It is important that persons not only do what is right but that they do it in the right way. Matthew contrasts two kinds of behaviour. There is the behaviour of actors (hypocrites) who do what they do on stage precisely to move their audience. There is another behaviour that is not concerned to impress, but that flows from the secret of a person’s heart and is concerned with making a true response to grace. All three disciplines are characterized by the same opposites: publicly – hidden; people – Father; present (“they have …”) and future reward (“he will …). The overall concern is not the public doing of righteousness, but doing of what God requires. The disciples must want only the glory of their Father in heaven, not a praise which is directed at themselves. All the three activities exhibit the motivation to do ‘in secret’. They include also their reward which has been described in the beatitudes (5,12). It is the experience of the blessedness of sharing in Jesus’ own communion with God.
Why give alms? Why pray? Why fast? Why do it all in secret? And what is the reward for these things? Obviously when we give alms we love others. But beyond that through repentance and self-denial, they bring us closer to God. According to the gospels, when Jesus prays and fasts – alone in secret – his prayer and fasting become channels through which he comes closer to his Father. Prayer and fasting align his will with his Father’s will. They can do the same for us. Fasting not just from food but from any of our desires, reminds us of our complete dependence on God. To be drawn closer to God by being freed from those desires is, again, its own reward.
