NOTES for Mat 6:1-4

There are various ways to interpret these well known words. Firstly we can understand them in such a way, that when we give alms with our left hand, we should not calculate how many we have already given before with the right hand. Secondly we can understand in such a way, that the right hand is responsible for receiving, earning money, and when we give alms with our left hand, there is no point to remember how much money we have in total. Thirdly we can also understand these words allegorically: the left hand (from the heart) stands for love, alms; and the right hand stands for righteousness, justice and truth. Then it can be a question of relationship with people here in the general view and not of alms; let love and truth not hinder one another, but complement each other. We have to choose interpretation depending on how we are directed by the Holy Spirit; - you know any reading of the Scripture will be ineffective without Holy Spirit’s guidance.

God Himself never forces His mercy on anyone. Even His coming into this world takes place simply as the birth of an earthly Child. If we are called to become like His perfection (Mt 5:48), then our mercy and piety too must be neither showy nor intrusive, but a joyful expression of our hidden relationship with the heavenly Father.

Preparation for Lent concludes with a reading of Christ's words, handed down to us by the evangelist Matthew, about what fasting and prayer are. In the Sermon on the Mount the Lord tells His disciples that fasting and prayer have meaning only in secret from people. Only when they become events in your deeply personal relationship with God and are visible to no one except God - only then do fasting and prayer have meaning. The Lord warns us about the subtle temptation to "appear to people to be fasting." In this time of fasting, our enemy really does tempt us with the desire to appear so that those around us will think (even if not out loud): "Ah, how devout, practically a saint..." This "Ah!" destroys the whole meaning of fasting. "Rend your hearts and not your garments," as we heard from the prophet Joel (Joel 2:13).

And today the Lord also speaks to us about prayer: do not heap up words like the Gentiles. Neither the length of a prayer nor the number of words said in it means anything. Only the movement of the soul toward God gives prayer its value. And today's reading ends with the Lord's Prayer. The apostles had the custom of saying this prayer three times a day: morning, noon, and evening. Without doubt, the apostles prayed beyond that, but these three times became for Christians a kind of spiritual frame on which the whole day - and all of life - rests.

Prayer, as the highest form of communion, contains many different components. Somewhat conventionally, we divide them into thanksgiving, praise, and petition. Someone may offer another classification or suggest other types of prayerful speech; here nothing defines anything completely, just as no scheme fully applies to the living current of life. But this is what today's reading reminds us of. The Lord calls us to brevity in prayer, and at first glance this appears to contradict the whole practice of long services and extensive prayer rules. It would contradict them, if not for the words: for your Father knows what you need. That is, when speaking about prayer, the Lord has only petitionary prayer in mind. Why, if He Himself so loves to pray from the Psalter, where there is so much praise and so many other expressions of the spirit of a person's communion with God? It appears to us that this is full of deep meaning and is not accidental at all. We sometimes rank petitionary prayer below the others; it appears to us that asking for something means humiliating ourselves. We are accustomed to relying on ourselves, especially now in today's world, when so much is accessible to human powers. But in reality, and Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh writes about this, petitionary prayer is a very important prayer; perhaps it is even more important than the others, and the text of today's reading reminds us of this. But here is the question: how should we ask, in order to raise petitionary prayer to such a height? The answer to this question is contained in the priceless treasure that is the Lord's Prayer, in which the element of petition is very strong precisely in this highest sense. One recalls Metropolitan Anthony's conversation with an atheist woman. She said that in the Lord's Prayer she could accept everything except the words "and lead us not into temptation" - a sign of weakness, she said. And when we think little of petitionary prayers, we act like that woman. In these moments let us remember the revelation of the apostle Paul: "...for My power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor 12:9).

Speaking about spiritual life, Jesus singles out the principal thing that forms its foundation: relationships with God and with people. When He speaks of those who “have already received their reward,” He probably wants first of all to tell us that a reward received here in this world according to the laws of this world will remain in it. It will not become part of the Kingdom. It would perhaps be easier for us to think that by following the Savior’s instructions we are thereby preparing for ourselves some other reward that awaits us in another, better world, where we will one day come in order to enjoy the fruits of our efforts here. But is that so? If the Kingdom awaited us after death, if it were something absolutely other than our world, rewards would probably work precisely as we are accustomed to think. Yet after Christ’s coming, the Kingdom is no longer the future for us but the present, provided of course that we are Christians not merely in word. Our task as Christians is not to lay up reserves for the future, but to take root in the life of the Kingdom here and now. This is precisely what Jesus directs us toward. He calls us to think not about what this present, still untransformed world will say about us, but about how our prayers, good works, and everything else will affect our life in the Kingdom, where the relationships of which the Kingdom consists come to the forefront. Then the successes we have achieved, our rewards, will become part of our new life, the life that is properly called Christianity.

Every action must have a definite goal, and more than that, this goal is reached: the one who loves for show, in order to earn respect and honor, easily reaches his goal - he "has already received his reward." But the one who loves in secret, even from himself, so much that his "left hand does not know" about it, that is, inwardly, in the depth of the heart where even a person's own consciousness does not always penetrate, all the more receives "repayment," that is, reaches his goal.

And it seems that the Gospel, the good news, consists precisely in this promise that the goal will be reached, even if our left hand never finds out about it. Christ promises that compassion, participation in another person's life, will reach that person's heart, that the one who seeks God will manage to be alone with Him in his closet, behind a closed door.

The logic of the Sermon on the Mount continues here: the logic of interiorization, of moving spiritual life from the outside inward. True relationships with God do not consist in performing certain actions, but in the inner motivation for those actions. Best of all is when these actions become so inwardly natural to us that we ourselves no longer notice their motives. It is no accident that the words, "your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you openly," are repeated here like a refrain.

Almsgiving that is unnoticed from the outside, prayer without many words and without onlookers: these are elements of that naturalness. And Jesus Himself shows an example of such naturalness: the prayer "Our Father," born right here and now, which became the standard for Christians of every generation.

And it begins with the word most natural for the Son as He turns to the Father: "Abba," which would best be translated not as "Father" and not even as "Papa," but as "Daddy"; it is such a childlike and tender form of address.