Lenten pillar of almsgiving helps foster fraternity

Intermountain Catholic

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During Lent, Catholics are called to give alms. Almsgiving, “as an act of penance or fraternal charity,” is, together with prayer and fasting, “traditionally recommended to foster the state of interior penance,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church states.

While the dictionary defines almsgiving as donating money or food to the poor, the Catholic Church expands that definition to include giving not only money or goods, but also performing other acts of charity.

“The works of mercy are charitable actions by which we come to the aid of our neighbor in his spiritual and bodily necessities,” the Catechism states. “Instructing, advising, consoling, comforting are spiritual works of mercy, as are forgiving and bearing wrongs patiently. The corporal works of mercy consist especially in feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and burying the dead. Among all these, giving alms to the poor is one of the chief witnesses to fraternal charity: it is also a work of justice pleasing to God.”

Charity is “the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God,” the Catechism says, adding that “The Lord asks us to love as he does, even our enemies, to make ourselves the neighbor of those farthest away, and to love children and the poor as Christ himself.”

Perhaps the best definition of charity is that given by the Apostle Paul in his first Letter to the Corinthians: “Charity is patient and kind, charity is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Charity does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Charity bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Charity is the first of the theological virtues, which “are the foundation of Christian moral activity; they animate it and give it its special character,” the Catechism states. Charity animates and inspires the practices of all the virtues; it “upholds and purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love,” the Catechism adds.

The popes often have written about the importance of almsgiving.

In the first encyclical devoted to the Church’s social teaching, Rerum Novarum (Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor), Leo XIII in 1891 wrote that “Man should not consider his material possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need. … True, no one is commanded to distribute to others that which is required for his own needs and those of his household; nor even to give away what is reasonably required to keep up becomingly his condition in life. …  But, when what necessity demands has been supplied, and one’s standing fairly taken thought for, it becomes a duty to give to the indigent out of what remains over. … It is a duty, not of justice (save in extreme cases), but of Christian charity – a duty not enforced by human law. But the laws and judgments of men must yield place to the laws and judgments of Christ the true God, who in many ways urges on his followers the practice of almsgiving.”

More than a century later, Pope Benedict XVI dedicated an entire encyclical to the theme: 2009’s Caritas in Veritate (Charity in truth), in which he stated that “Charity is at the heart of the Church’s social doctrine. Every responsibility and every commitment spelt out by that doctrine is derived from charity which, according to the teaching of Jesus, is the synthesis of the entire Law.”

The saints also have had plenty to say about charity. Among them was St. Gregory of Narek, who in the 10th century wrote a poem that included these lines:

“For You commanded that we should do good,

from dawn to dusk, in the same day,

nine times fifty, plus four times ten.

Always attentive,

forgiving with an unfettered heart,

something more

than the expectation of men’s prayers.”

More recently, Mother Teresa said, “Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.”