👉🏾👉🏾👉🏾 (#Anqetse #Bitsuan)“#Blessed are the #merciful, for they will be shown #mercy” (Matthew 5:7)
(Part 27)
Dear followers of the Orthodox teachings , we greet you with the peace of the Lord. Today, based on the topic mentioned above, we present to you the following important lesson. We encourage everyone to read it carefully and learn from it.
✍🏾Hypocritical Mercy Will Not Lead Us to Righteousness
True mercy must come from the heart. As stated earlier, works of compassion should be done without seeking benefit or praise. Yet in our time, some people use charity to promote themselves or their organizations. They turn the suffering of the poor into public display and media content, forgetting the dignity and privacy of those in need. This behavior is shameful and empty.
✍🏾Charity Without Love Has No Reward
Saint Paul teaches,
“If I give all I have to feed the poor and give my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.”(1 Corinthians 13:3)
Kindness done without love carries no spiritual value.
✍🏾Christ Condemns Hypocritical Giving
👉🏾“Our Lord teaches us to avoid false, showy acts of mercy. He said:“Be careful not to do your alms before men to be seen by them; otherwise you have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets so that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”
Matthew 6:1-4
Giving must be secret, humble, and pure. God sees what is done in secret and rewards openly.
👉🏾He also rebuked the hypocrites who focus on outward acts while neglecting the heart of God’s law:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, yet you have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.”
Matthew 23:23
✍🏾Mercy Must Be Pure
👉🏾The Holy Apostle teaches us that true heavenly wisdom is pure and free from hypocrisy.“But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.”(James 3:17)
👉🏾When Saint Yohannes Afework was teaching, a man came to him and said, “I give alms, and I seek praise for it. If I am not praised, I will not give.” Saint Yohannes explained this with the parable: “It is better to sow, even if weeds grow, than not to sow at all and inherit nothing.”
When seed is sown, weeds may appear. The farmer may remove them, or even if he does not, some good grain will still be found among the weeds. In the same way, those who give for the sake of vain praise may later repent. Their hearts can eventually turn away from pride and toward true compassion.
👉🏾However, the one who refuses to give and only stands outside criticizing others finds it hard for his heart to return to mercy. This does not mean that we should encourage vain praise, but that we should at least practice giving. Even imperfect giving can become a path toward purity when the heart opens to repentance.
Continues 👇🏾