What are we doing here? Why do we come to Church, and pray like this together when it seems that Jesus is telling us to do the opposite:
do not imitate the hypocrites: they love to say their prayers standing up in the synagogues and at the street corners for people to see them… But when you pray, go to your private room and, when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in that secret place.
Are we ignoring him? What is he actually saying? When you read through this Gospel passage a few times it becomes clear: he’s drawing a line between those who do good because it is good, and those who do good because they want to be seen doing good. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are the pillars of a virtuous life; the man or woman of virtue does all three of these things, but there is a risk we can become vain in our practices, that we make an exhibition of ourselves, that our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving putrefy and become exercises in vanity. This is the difference between real virtue and virtue signalling – real virtue is directed towards the glory of God, and virtue signalling is directed towards self-glorification.
Jesus isn’t telling us to be secretive about our faith, to keep it hidden from the world, when he says “go to your private room and, when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in that secret place” – we’ve just heard him in the Gospel a few days ago saying “let your light shine before men like a lamp on a lampstand or a city on a hill.” Instead he is telling us to shut the doors of our hearts to worldly concerns, and retreat into the silence of that place; to resist the temptations of the flesh and of the world, to resist the noise out there telling us what to do and how to be good, and offer our prayers to him in a spirit of humility. Pray because prayer is good for the soul, because it is right to praise God, not because we want people to see us praying. This attitude, has to suffuse our prayer, so too must it suffuse our fasting and our almsgiving; we fast because self-denial is the doorway to deeper virtue, and we give alms as a sacrifice to give life to our prayers. It doesn't matter if people see us or not. It doesn't matter if they think well of us or not. It doesn't matter if we win praise or if we are mocked for our faith. What matters is the attitude of humility. This attitude is summed up in our first reading from St Paul;
Thin sowing means thin reaping; the more you sow, the more you reap. Each one should give what he has decided in his own mind, not grudgingly or because he is made to, for God loves a cheerful giver.
God loves a cheerful giver, who gives everything willingly and joyfully to God; who gives his time for prayer, his food for fasting, and his wealth for almsgiving.
Today’s saint, Aloysius Gonzaga, was just such a saint. He was the son of the Marquis of Castiglione a wealthy nobleman, sent to the court of the Holy Roman Empress in Spain to win power and influence for himself and his family. While there, he entered into the secret room of his own heart, subjecting himself to the harsh disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving; such that when he was old enough (although still only seventeen years’ old) he renounced his inheritance, and chose the life of poverty and radical obedience by becoming a Jesuit, travelling to Rome to in the hope of becoming a missionary. While he was still training, there was a plague, and Aloysius went out in search of the poor and sick, carrying them to the Jesuit Hospitals, washing them, and feeding them, and helping them to receive the sacraments. He did this willingly, even though the sight and smell of the plague victims physically revolted him. When fears for his health made his superiors stop him from caring for the poor, he bothered them persistently until they let him go back. Eventually, he caught the plague and died after weeks of suffering, just after his twenty-third birthday.
Aloysius is a model of cheerful giving – what began in his heart as a calling from God, was nurtured in that same heart by a life of asceticism, of prayer, and fasting, and almsgiving, before he was finally called into the arms of God – serving Him in the poor and sick. Today he challenges us to live lives of real virtue; praying to God out of true love and devotion, feeding that prayer with fasting and self-denial, and giving alms as a sacrifice of love for God. Then we too will receive the rich reward received by St Aloysius – a place at God’s eternal banquet.
The alternative, if we do the opposite and turn inwards, if we seek to glorify ourselves in this life, and win the praise of those around us, we risk hearing those fearful words Jesus speaks in today's Gospel: you have already had your reward.
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