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Dear Parish Faithful,
In his sermon on the mount Jesus not only gives instructions about prayer and fasting, he gives commandments about almsgiving as well. Indeed, in the sermon, this part comes first.... Jesus, once again, did not say if you give alms. He said, when you give alms....
The apostles of Christ magnified the Master’s teaching about the need to help the needy. They insisted that human perfection consists in giving to the poor and following Christ. They taught, with Jesus, that the measure one gives is the measure one gets. They were convinced that the greatest imitation of God is to give everything without asking anything in return. And when such perfection could not be literally accomplished, the commandment to share one’s possessions, not from one’s abundance but out of one’s needs, was considered binding on all [Acts 4.32–35]....
A person who claims to believe in God but does not help the needy has no living faith.
—Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko, The Lenten Spring
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We often link together "prayer and fasting," as in last Sunday's Gospel reading from St. Mark, when Jesus taught his bewildered disciples that a certain type of "demon" can only be expelled through "prayer and fasting." (Mk. 9:29). But, we also know that in the Sermon on the Mount it is "prayer, almsgiving and fasting" that are grouped together as the three essential practices of an integrated whole in the "spiritual life."
