Inner Disposition vs. Outward Action!

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

2 Cor 9:6-11; Mt 6:1-6,16-18

Today’s Gospel highlights the importance of almsgiving, prayer, and fasting from the point of view of inner disposition rather than the outward action. 

Almsgiving: For Jesus, almsgiving must reveal one’s internal sincerity. Though not strictly, one of the best examples for almsgiving is the poor widow’s offering (Mk 12:41-44). When she made an offering in the temple, meaning that the offering was to God, there was no pretense in her gesture. There was no show-off on her part, though the minimum she put in was all that she had for her sustenance. But the offering of the rich was aimed more at publicity than piety. Whenever the rich people contributed to the collection box, they did it in such a way that they dropped the handful of coins from a certain height so that the continuous jingling would make others wonder about the amount of money they must have contributed to the temple treasury. Here, we should not forget that whatever they put in was from their surplus and not the money that they had for their sustenance, like the poor widow. In other words, by keeping so much in reserve and contributing only out of their surplus, the rich declared indirectly that they did not trust in divine providence. Whereas by contributing even what she reserved for her everyday sustenance, the poor widow showed what it meant to trust in God’s providence. Jesus invites us to examine our internal disposition with regard to our almsgiving. 

Prayer: A beautiful prayer found in the crematorium at Belsen Concentration Camp in the coat pocket belonging to a young Jewish girl read like this: 

‘O Lord! Remember not only the men and women of goodwill,

But also those of ill will.

But do not only remember the suffering they have inflicted on us:

Remember also the fruits we reaped, thanks to this suffering:

Our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, the courage, the generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this.

And when they come to judgement, let all the fruits we have reaped be their forgiveness.’

The Jewish girl would have hardly expected that others would read her prayer one day. It was not that she prayed; she lived her prayer. How do we pray? 

Fasting: Fasting was recommended as a religious observance for self-purification. Hence, the inner transformation that only God could see is the goal. However, instead of attracting God’s attention by purifying their hearts, the hypocrites fasted only to draw others’ attention. In fact, they stayed away from God in a practice that should have drawn them closer to Him. Here is where the instance of Jesus’ fasting becomes exemplary. Even when he was starving for food right after forty days of fasting, Jesus did not change stone into bread, though Satan tempted him to do so. Jesus proved that his communion with God was stronger than the temptations of Satan. In addition, for Jesus, a religious practice like fasting can have social implications. Hence, the implied meaning of fasting is to give in charity what we might have ended up saving through our abstinence. Thus, even a strictly religious practice like fasting will acquire its social meaning when it is turned toward the love of our needy neighbors. 

Let us pray that we may mend our hearts according to Jesus’ expectations on almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. 

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar