Explication
Every day
Biblical commentaries
Alms, prayer, fasting. Three key words of fundamental Jewish practices still today, which Muslims also experience particularly during the month of Ramadan. Three calls that remind Jesus’ disciples of their own Lents throughout the year. Westerners we have only one before Easter, the Orthodox and Eastern Catholics, three!
At the heart of the Master’s recommendations, it is emphasized that the essentials of the Christian faith are lived in the secret of the heart, in the intimate. Our practices are good if they originate in an internalized relationship with God.
The apostle Paul helps us understand: “Even though you practice almsgiving, fasting and prayer, if you lack love it is nothing” (According to 1 Cor 13). Jesus is first interested in what is at stake in the depths of our being. So it is when he contemplates the poor widow. She puts everything she has into the temple offering while the rich put in their surplus (Mk 12:41-44). So it is when he retires alone to the mountains to pray and enter into dialogue with his Father (ex Lk 6:12-13). So it is with God’s favorite fast: “Is this not sharing your bread with the hungry, welcoming the homeless poor into your home, covering those you see without clothing, not hiding from your fellow man? » (Is 58,7).
Father of all tenderness, teach us to make of our thousand gestures which punctuate our lives a communion of love with You.
Other readings: 2 Kings 2, 1.6-14 – Ps: 30 (31)
