On Charity

I hope that everyone had a good, and profitable weekend. This post is on a topic that I struggle with all of the time. I'm almost hesitant to post this because it gets a little personal for me, but that is kind of the point of Lectio Divina. This post is not about charity in the modern sense, but about love.

Today's Lectio Divina is inspired by the Epistle Reading of 1 Corinthians 12:27-31&13:1-8.

27Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. 28 And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues. 29Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles? 30have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret? 31But covet earnestly the best gifts. And yet show I unto you a more excellent way.

1Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 3And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

4Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 5doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; 6rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; 7beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

8Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.(KJV)

 Alms-giving is a pillar of Lent - along with Prayer and Fasting - but even if we give alms what does it profit us if we have no love in our hearts?

We work miracles. we can prophesy, we can do many wondrous things through the grace of Jesus Christ, but if we don't have love we are nothing.

We don't do these things; such as prayer, fasting, alms-giving, or even lectio divina, to make ourselves look good, or even to puff ourselves up. We don't do these things merely because we are commanded to. We do these things because we have love - love for our fellow man, love for ourselves, love for God's creation, and most importantly love for God.

We should not hate. We should revile hate and try to separate ourselves fro, hate whenever and wherever we recognize it - be it in us or in others. We should flee from hate and run to the comforting embrace of love.

But often times we give in to hate our worldly natures and we focus on the hate around us, and instead of purging the hate inside of us we foster its growth. We see a politician that we don't like and we think it is OK to hate them because the media says they are the enemy. We see someone with a different opinion and we think it is OK to hate them because the world tells us that those who think different are the enemy who hate us and are trying to destroy us.

Instead, we should have recognized these people as the icons of Christ that they are, and in our love we should have prayed for them, and ourselves.

Praying for our enemies is hard. Fighting the hate inside of us can be an extreme struggle. I have into the hate that I had for me ex-wife and let it consume me to the point of a massive depressive episode. The thing that started to heal me is when I recognized that she is an icon of Christ whom I should love and I started praying for her. And I started praying that my hate for the mother of my children would go away. The anger and hate that I had for her was not very thinly veiled anger and hate for myself.

I am no saint, quite possibly I'm the furthest thing from a saint as anyone is likely to meet. What I am is a human - prone to sin and error - who is trying to change for the better. I am a man who is trying to learn to do things out of love instead of obligation.

When we give alms, when we pray, when we fast, we should do so out of love. And we should definitely do so in secret. We need not be like the many celebrities who give to charities for good PR, we should not be like the pharisee when we pray. Those things lead to pride and prelest. Instead we should be like St. Nicholas when we give, and like the publican when we pray.

Similarly, I do not publish my Lectio Divina to seem better than anyone else, or to show off how holy I am. I am neither better than anyone, nor am I holy. I publish my Lectio Divina because someone asked me to as they wanted to read more. I publish out of love, even though I am deathly afraid of what other might think of my inner thoughts.

And yet sorrow unto death did not stop Jesus from what He needed to do. What He did was out of His love for mankind. I pray that one day I could learn to love like that.