II Corinthians 9:6-11; Luke 6:31-36
What do we have that we should be giving away?
When we hear today’s epistle, we naturally think about money. St. Paul tells us that “God loveth a cheerful giver,” and we picture tithing to the Church or giving alms to someone who needs help paying the bills.
That is a good place to start. In this epistle, St. Paul is collecting help for people in need. We should not spiritualize his words so thoroughly that our wallets remain untouched. Taking tithing and almsgiving seriously is part of our repentance, our healing, and our growth in Christ. Through giving, God changes our hearts and teaches us to offer the other gifts He has entrusted to us.
But listen to what else St. Paul says. God gives us what we need so that we “may abound to every good work.” He promises to “increase the fruits of your righteousness.”
Money is one thing we can share. But what about our attention? Our patience? Our willingness to forgive? What about kindness offered to someone who has done nothing to earn it? These, too, are riches. And these, too, are meant to be given away.
St. John Chrysostom draws our attention to the word St. Paul uses. He does not simply call our generosity giving. He calls it sowing. Think about that. A farmer could keep all his seed safely in the barn. He could count it, admire it, and congratulate himself that he had not lost a single grain. But he would have no harvest. Seed fulfills its purpose when it is planted. And the gifts God gives us bear fruit when we put them to work in love.
This helps us understand something about the asceticism of relationships.
We pray. We fast. We give alms. Through these practices, we learn to resist the demand that everything serve our comfort and our will. We make room for God, and we learn to offer ourselves to Him. There are moments when this brings us such peace. We become aware of His grace.
Then someone interrupts us; and suddenly we discover how much work remains.
We may have been quite willing to offer God twenty minutes of prayer. Offering our neighbor five minutes of undivided attention turns out to be more difficult. We may be keeping the fast carefully. But can we fast from having the last word? Can we give up the pleasure of repeating a story that makes someone else look foolish? Can we surrender our right to make sure everyone knows that we were right?
Those are places where the seed goes into the ground. Those are places where our prayer and fasting can actually bear fruit.
But if we keep waiting for people to become worthy of our patience or deserving of our kindness, the seed stays in the barn. We keep it to ourselves, and our neighbor goes hungry.
Consider patience.
We often treat patience as something people must earn by behaving reasonably. We will be patient with them once they stop doing all those things that bother us. But patience is needed precisely when those conditions are missing. The field needs the seed. The fruit needs to grow.
St. Augustine gives us a powerful warning about this; “Now we must be on our guard, more than anything else, not to lose patience in our eagerness to be justified.”
We know how that happens. We begin with a real grievance. Someone misunderstood us. Someone treated us unfairly. Someone acted unjustly. We want to set the record straight. And in the process, we become harsh, careless, and cruel. We win the argument and wound the person. The seed never makes it to the ground.
The ascetic struggle is to tell the truth while remaining faithful to love. Sometimes that means speaking more gently. Sometimes it means waiting in silence. Sometimes it means asking an honest question, without trying to trap the other person, and then listening to the answer in love.
And here is something that we must always keep in mind: we never know the burdens another person is carrying. We see the distraction, the short temper, the injustice, or the missed responsibility; we may not see the grief, the fear, the pain, or the exhaustion underneath it. Remembering how little we know about another person’s burdens, we can leave room for what we do not understand. That is one way to give mercy.
But today’s Gospel takes us further.
It is pleasant to be generous when generosity is appreciated. We listen, and the other person listens to us. We help, and later they help us. We forgive, and they apologize.
Thanks be to God for relationships like that; may all of the world’s crooked lines be made straight like this!
But Christ asks:
“For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.”
Then He says:
“But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again.”
This is where we discover whether our kindness has an invoice attached. Perhaps we never asked for money. But we expected gratitude. We expected affection. We expected the person to recognize how much we had done. And when the payment of whatever type does not arrive, we become resentful.
Christ calls us to give without making the other person’s response the condition of our love. We can offer kindness without being thanked. We can pray for someone who continues to misunderstand us. We can correct someone privately and gently, seeking their healing rather than the satisfaction of embarrassing them.
We cannot control what they do with that offering. We are responsible for what we offer.
This goes against some of our strongest instincts. Why should we live this way?
Christ gives us the answer:
“For He is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.”
That is how our Father loves.
And before we start identifying all the unthankful people who need our kindness, we should remember how often we have received His. How much mercy has God given us that we barely noticed? How often have we received His gifts without giving thanks? Yet even when we turn away from Him, He continues to seek our healing and salvation. We see the fullness of this love on the Cross. Even as His persecutors were putting Him to death, Christ prayed for their forgiveness.
As St. Ambrose observes, “What Christ said in word, he proved also by example.”
We ourselves live by that mercy. Christ has forgiven us, borne with us, and loved us when we have given Him little love in return. When He commands us to be merciful, He calls us to offer our neighbors what we have already received from Him.
His mercy has borne fruit in our lives. That fruit contains seed for another’s field: forgiveness we can offer, patience we can practice, kindness we can share. He gives us the grace to sow even when the ground seems unpromising. That is how the harvest grows.
That brings us back to St. Paul: “God loveth a cheerful giver.”
How do we become cheerful when giving costs us something, and when we may never see the fruit? This, too, is part of our ascetic struggle. We practice giving without keeping a tally. We remember how generously God has treated us. We ask Him to help us find joy in sharing His mercy, even when no one thanks us for it.
That joy may take time to grow. This is part of the long, slow work of our salvation.
Sometimes the first offering is the struggle itself. We feel the sharp reply forming, but refuse to speak it. Instead of offering sarcasm, we stay quiet and choose to listen. We ask God to help us mean the kindness we are trying to show.
Even in this small offering, the sharp reply withheld, the attention freely given, something is growing. Perhaps the person receiving our kindness will become more merciful in turn. We cannot know. But as we cooperate with God’s grace, we do know that He is cultivating mercy within our own hearts.
We begin with the meager strength we have, asking Him to heal our reluctance and enlarge our hearts.
This week, choose one relationship in which you are tempted to keep a tally. Offer one concrete act of mercy there. Listen. Help. Pray. Speak gently. Give without presenting the bill afterward.
The other person may be surprised. They may respond with the same sarcasm as before; they may even see your silence as an opportunity to double down. One act of mercy may not change an established pattern. Offer it anyway, and ask God for the grace to offer another. That is certainly how God Himself acts toward us.
Keep working toward a tithe, and give materially to those in need. The same mercy that opens our hearts to our neighbors should also open our hands. Let that love shape how we spend our money, how we offer our time, and how we relate to one another.
God has given us seed to sow. The harvest He promises is righteousness, thanksgiving, and a life increasingly like His own.
“Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.”