GOSPEL REFLECTION, WEDNESDAY, 11TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, 17 JUNE 2026

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18. The beginning of this section of the lengthy Sermon on the Mount deals with the Works of Holiness, almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. These three spiritual disciplines were an essential part of our Jewish heritage. The first, almsgiving, in Hebrew is also the word for ‘righteousness,’ showing how important this work of holiness was in Jewish religious thought and practice. Jesus and his disciples were steeped in this tradition, and it is essential in Christianity. We are to be generous to the poor.

The emphasis in Jesus’ teaching on almsgiving, as in any other spiritual work, is on the motive and intention with which we do it. If we do it with the mixed motive of being generous to the poor and seeking the attention of others by doing it, we are not being righteous, we are being self-seeking. In Jesus’ third Work of Holiness, fasting, we are faced with the same principle – we must not do it to seek the attention of others; we must fast for the correct motive and intention, in secret, as a gesture of piety in relation to God alone. This is no small matter for committed disciples; this is the way of the Kingdom of God, the core of Jesus’ teaching ministry.

It is very much a feature of human action and conviction to do things with multiple mixed motives. It is perfectly possible to do this with religious commitment and spiritual practices too, but these belong to God alone. Among the Beatitudes with which the Sermon on the Mount opens, Jesus emphasises ‘purity of heart’ – ‘blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ In our daily material lives the reality is that we do things with mixed motives, dealing with several demands at once. In our spiritual lives as disciples of Christ, this must no longer apply. Spiritual acts and motives, ‘purity of heart’ in the Lord’s teaching, must be focused and rooted solely in our relationship to God. As Jesus says in his words on almsgiving, “do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” (v. 3). To do otherwise is to apply earthly and worldly motives to spiritual commitment and practice, which spiritual teachers in our tradition refer to as ‘spiritual materialism,’ a contradiction in terms.