Almsgiving and Reality

Almsgiving means giving to the poor, its easy nowadays, we do it by clicking on a screen.
In the past it meant going out to the find the poor or letting them into our comfort zone, it meant being disturbed by them, seeing, smelling their poverty for ourselves and even risking our safety in our encounter with them.

Giving alms to the sick could well risk catching their sickness or coming home with fleas or worse. Almsgiving is about solidarity with the poor but also education of the rich.

There is an element of reminding us of the fleeting nature of our existence and the turn of the wheel of fortune. I met a wealthy businessman from Mosul, ISIS came, he fled and ended up with nothing in a refugee camp in Jordan, "not even my dignity", and now lives with his family in tiny room as an impoverished exile in Brighton. We might think that our wealth protects but it is an illusion but war, economic collapse, even illness can change everything. Poverty can reveal the gracious prince as a vicious beggar, sickness can reveal the sweet and benign old man as a self obsessed God cursing beast.

Remember Chrysostom: If we give from our excess we are doing nothing but returning what we have grabbed for ourselves, almsgiving is about giving from your necessities.

The late Father John Edwards SJ used to say: you can tell where your heart is and what is important to you by looking at yout bank statement.