The Craft of Giving Alms

WHEN you sow a thought, you reap an act. When you sow an act, you reap a habit. When you sow a habit, you reap a character. When you sow a character, you reap a destiny.
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MY DEAREST FRIEND,

I challenge you to a little exercise in piety. Please bear with me as I try to explain how it works. I promise it will make sense in the end.

Let's begin:

Hope is unlike faith because Hope is something that must be shared. Faith can not be shared because it is a virtue exclusive of everything else but God and God's illumination in the heart of the person, faith perceives God because God initiated the action of faith. It is not the other way around.

The most excellent degrees of faith will come to nothing if God did not favor the heart with His illumination. It is not because we pray that we are answered, it is because God is pleased to answer us. This is why those who want to believe will never be able to unless God turns them in their hearts to Him. Faith is a very personal affair. It is the evidence of things unseen.

Hope is like faith only in reverse. It is my faith when perceived from the object of my faith. If I told a person that I will put my faith in him, that person would perceive that I am being hopeful. Of course, that's natural human faith, supernatural faith has as it's object God alone. But you see, hope can be perceived by the loving heart and the believing mind.

Hope is something that is given to us. It we have hope, you can be sure it was something that was not there before. Because it is the Giver of hope that will ultimately fulfill the promise contained in it. We can not hope in our own selves because that would be like a closed loop, nothing gets in and nothing gets out. Hope is also evidence of things unseen but unlike faith, hope is meant to be shared with others.

Now, we can put hope in the hearts of others who did not have hope before and we can also redeem the promise of hope that other's keep in their hearts.

Hope is also the space where mercy acts. Try to see it in the faces of the Lord's Poor the exact moment when their hope is realized by your acts of mercy and you will be satisfied in your heart for the rest of the day. But if you do a lot, then you would have collected a lovely bouquet for our Lord. Hope is those little white flowers that grow in God's Kingdom and they are born from the comings and goings of life. You'll find a whole meadow of these over there, there are some that are hard to get because they grow high on the hilltops, some are easy, but they all please our Lord just the same. They're His one of His most favorite flowers. So next time you do your acts of mercy, say to yourself, "I'm picking little white flowers for Jesus today, I think I'll give my dear Savior, a lovely bouquet". Then imagine His big, warm smile.

Our Lord's poor are not greedy people. Some of them have hearts purer than the cleanest person on earth. I see people shun them like the plague and I think to myself, you snooze, you lose. God gave you a big, fat opportunity and you missed out on it, it's really your loss.

Sometimes I gave to one of our Lord's poor what seems to me was too little and he loved me for it, I saw it in his eyes. I say to myself, I can go to places where they can not go like inside shopping malls and restaurants, sometimes I just say, I'll go for them and buy something from there to keep in my pouch until God sends one of them again to me.

ADDED 20080809: Also, it's not all the time that you get something back from our Lord's poor, mind you. Sometimes, you get nothing back. Sometimes, you also get hurt. However, always bear in mind, my precious friend, that this the genuine way that our God operates, He gives that we may give Him thanks, He takes away that we may learn to release ourselves from the grip of past things, by our crosses He allows us to be wounded so that He may show us the true glory of His Love. Hope for nothing back when you give and you will surely receive.

I have just one rule. [UPDATE 20080802: They have to be in need - refer to entry: #06 A System of Common Needs (primarily conceived to exactly define the social missions of the one Solidarity but is adaptable also to other similar purposes outside our community) as well as all the Acts of Mercy both corporal and spiritual. This IS the one rule: They have to be in need. There is a canonical precept that obliges us to respond to these common needs with common alms. A precept carries the weight of an obligation as opposed to a counsel which is a persuasion. Thus, whether you approach them or they approach you, with regards to our Lord's Poor, we who are forever baptized have a sacred Christian duty on behalf of our Lord to do as much as we can to care for and respond to their needs. At the very least, we should never fail to help those of our Lord's Poor who approach us. Please disregard any previous statements made irrelevant by this update.] I let them approach me, it wouldn't be alms if it were I that came to them. They have ask for it. I know it must be hard for us to do something like, I mean, why not just make it easy and just hand it over. Well, that precludes charity, first of all. It really wouldn't be helping them when we rush to dump our garbage out to them just to get rid of them. And I've seen other people do this and I think, they could have made it all easier and just tossed themselves out with it, too.

Observe our Lord's poor asking for our help and realize how God is likewise requiring His poor to learn to trust Him. Remember, you have to aim for their hope. Try to perfect your acts of mercy by putting it where it counts or you'll never open up to it. This is how God forges heavenly character, refining worthy men and women in the furnace of humiliation that burns with intense fires of affliction. For crosses are God's trademark, not His curse. Crosses only become curses to those who do not wish to carry them with us as we bear our burdens one with another in union with our Lord Christ for in their own willfulness and refusal, they curse themselves some even persisting unto final damnation.

Remember always, charity must always be present or it's a miss. Mercy must connect with hope or it will be just plain awkwardness. What if that person wasn't really asking for anything? You do that little dance with him, and say, "OK, see ya".

But if you get it right, not only do you get a flower for Jesus, the satisfaction you get in your heart from the moments where these things connect is tremendous. Maybe, you'll learn to love our Lord's poor and realize what our Lord meant by "storing up treasures in heaven" when they give back to you something precious you'll remember forever. Something that the richest, most wealthiest person on this planet can never buy, he just can't afford something like that.

The Badjao people, all the dispossessed, the luckless and the street kids out there, all our Lord's poor, they are really our masters, you know. They are the most loved of all of God's children. I'm just so lucky that I am able to help them where I can for I know how much my Jesus would really appreciate something like that. I hope you will find yourself blessed by this little exercise.

There is a craft to giving alms and you will learn this also when you come a "picking those little white flowers for our Lord". Give our Lord a bouquet everyday and your heart will always feel easy and light.

So lets pick those little white flowers for Jesus,
and give each day our Savior a lovely bouquet
my precious Companion from always to always -
joyously extend the Love of God to those in need
these make our Savior's Heart very glad, indeed!

Please refer to entry: A Meditation on Hope

Peace and God bless you!

Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.