POINTS TO PONDER : ALMSGIVING
- “We often think that Great Lent is simply about going to church much more often, reading more, and eating different things (but not necessarily less). There is more to it than that. As you will hear over and over again in our hymnography in Great Lent, giving to the poor and needy, the widows, the orphans, and so forth, is one of our major preoccupations in Great Lent. This emphasis is supposed to be helping us remember how our lives should be all the time”. See Homily : 1 February, 2009, Zacchæus Sunday, We turn a new Leaf.
- “Metropolitan Leonty (Turkevitch), of blessed memory, is known always to have had money in his pocket specifically for the purpose of giving money to those who were going to ask for it whenever he was walking on his way somewhere”. See Homily : 28 February, 2009, Saturday before Great Lent, Humble, open-hearted, generous Almsgiving.]
- “Metropolitan Leonty was not alone, because Archbishop Gregory, of blessed memory, and his uncle, the famous choir director, Nicholas Afonsky, behaved in just the same way. The uncle said to his nephew, Archbishop Gregory : 'If you are walking about somewhere and someone is asking you for money, it is not your business to ask him questions about this money. If he asks for money, he needs it, so give him whatever you have to give him. You do not ask him questions. If he is going to misuse it, that is his business. It is between him and the Lord'”. [See previous homily of 28 February, 2009.]
- “Therefore, brothers and sisters, as we are about to begin Lent, let us do our best to co-operate with the Lord and His love. Let us begin Lent with the understanding that the main point of Lent is that we need our love for the Saviour to be increased more and more. We need to remember that we cannot do anything good except with His help. He will heal whatever is amiss with us more and more as we offer ourselves to the Lord”. [See previous homily of 28 February, 2009.]
- “When we are giving money to someone who is asking for it, when we are helping a neighbour who needs help, or visiting someone who is sick in the hospital or otherwise indisposed, when we are visiting someone in prison or we are caring for the needs of others, we are also offering this to Christ”. See Homily : 22 February, 2009, Sunday of the Last Judgement, Everything must be under-girded with Love.
- “All through Great Lent we are going to be reminded, ourselves, that in order to express our love for Jesus Christ we have to give alms to the poor. All sorts of people are forgetting this element of Great Lent, thinking that the fast is mainly concerned with depriving ourselves of meat, with bemoaning ourselves and our sins, and so forth. Lent is not just that”. See Homily : 10 February, 2008, Zacchæus Sunday, Repentance as applied Love.
- “What we are almost always forgetting in North America is that the other significant half of Great Lenten activity is almsgiving, caring for the poor, paying special attention to people who are in need”. See Homily : 6 March, 2005, Sunday of the Last Judgement, How to observe Great Lent.
- “This openness, this hospitality in the love of God, is what is important. It is not that someone might take advantage of us that is the main concern. If someone tries to take advantage, that is between that person and God. Our responsibility is to share, and to embrace people in love. Who knows if the person who begins taking advantage might not be healed by the encounter with selfless giving and caring ? A person could wake up from the deception of grasping and greediness, and learn open-armed hospitality, open-hearted hospitality”. See Homily : 22 August, 2009, Marriage is a serious Business.