Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount is a great source of joy for all. It puts us right inside the vision and thinking of God. Through Jesus’s preaching, we know our mission.
Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are ancient practices for helping us renounce sin and deepen our conversion. As we renounce sin, our selfishness, and violence, we become more centered on God and our neighbor. Prayer, fasting, and charity are meant to be roads that lead to a deeper faith, self-control, self-denial, and freedom to serve each other. The conversion process is a lifelong road where we are called to deepen our commitment to God and others at each new stage of our lives, each new step down the road.
Jesus is quick to point out throughout the Sermon on the Mount that it is easy for us to fulfill the minimum requirements for prayer, fasting, and almsgiving without really making any personal changes in our lives, without really deepening our conversion. Hypocrisy can lead us to do good things for the wrong reasons or to do good things just to look good or important. It is so easy to repeat the same old practice. So much so that many times we don’t even recognize our own hypocrisy. We can repeat a good action, a good prayer without really entering into the conversation process that is supposed to be the fundamental basis of that action.
Hypocrisy is not a sign of God working in us or the world. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are signs of God recreating each of us and our world.
St. Paul is very clear in saying that God gives us an abundance of spiritual and material goods so that we can use those good for good work.
Moreover, God is able to make every grace abundant for you,
so that in all things, always having all you need,
you may have an abundance for every good work.
As it is written:
He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor;
his righteousness endures forever.
Image: https://www.emethatorah.com/blog/wearing-mask-hypocrisy