Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving... Not Just for Lent | June 17

Click here to read the daily readings from the USCCB website.

I’ve been struggling lately with the temptation to try to earn God’s love. I feel like I have to do and say just the right things in order to be God’s gold-star daughter. This has been causing a lot of turmoil in my life honestly. I’ve set what might be an unrealistic standard for myself, but what if it’s not unrealistic? What if it’s a perfectly reasonable standard and I just refuse to overcome the temptations that prevent me from attaining it? You can begin to see my struggle. But even the word “attain” is problematic. Holiness is not something that we “attain.” God’s love, mercy, forgiveness, and grace is not something that we can “attain.” They are freely given. That doesn’t mean, however, that they’re easy to receive.

Jesus in today’s Gospel outlines how we can dispose ourselves to receive those things which allow us to draw close to Him: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. They’re not just for Lent. Jesus seeks to teach us that when we pray, fast, and give alms for God’s sake, He will honor our sacrifice. When we do those things for the praise of others Jesus says, “they have received their reward.” But what about when we feel like we have to? This is a big and challenging question. When we engage in acts of piety out of a compulsion to “earn” God’s affection, then we’re not actually doing them out of pure love for God. This is a step on the journey towards sainthood. If you relate to this feeling, you are not alone! There is nothing wrong with you! God wants to free you from this self-imposed obligation!

It’s difficult because our goal is good. We pray, fast, and give alms to increase our devotion to God and to show Him our love for Him. That’s such a good and holy desire! But we’re still slightly off-base when what we do is out of a sense of guilt, obligation, scrupulosity, etc. God doesn’t need our praise but it is truly right and just. God wants our praise to well up out of the abundance of love and gratitude we feel for Him.

But how do we tease out the difference? Wait for it… prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

I’m not going to pretend like I’m some sort of spiritual master who has figured out the key to holiness and the answer to scrupulosity. The first paragraph of this blog should be evidence of that. I’m not going to pretend that I understand why the answer to the problem kind of seems like the problem itself. But prayer, fasting, and almsgiving offered out of the freedom of our love and gratitude for God’s ever-present grace seems like the place to start challenging the devil’s lies… at least for me. What do you think? Email me at dbq057s1@dbqarch.org.

 

-Amanda Benner, Director of Evangelization