the reason we help

Today in A Year with the Church Fathers, we hear from a saint with an odd name. Saint Commodianus is his name. Fortunately when he grew up, they spoke Latin, so he was probably saved from being picked on by his classmates for having two unfortunate words contained in his name, like it is in English.

What he tells us today is summed up nicely on the back of the young lady's T-shirt in the pic above. But after saying this, St Commodianus then says something strange. He says, "I promise that whatever you give to the poor, God will give you back four times as much." That seems odd to me. Maybe he was following the idea of the tetris being a number of completion. In some ancient philosophies, they believed that the number four was the number of completion. So perhaps he was saying "God will pay you back completely for helping the poor." And I have experienced that in my life. There have been times when I've helped someone out and then received an unexpected income, usually around TEN times what I gave. I don't pretend to understand why it was ten times. Maybe St Commodianus could tell me.

But I think God would like us to grow beyond that thinking. And really, it's better for US if we do. Because if we're giving to the needy simply because we want God to bless us even more, then our giving is a form of selfishness. But if we give to those who need our help because we care about them... because we love them and want their lives to be better... then we WANT to give and we don't care if we get a reward in return. Just helping them is the reward, because making their lives better makes our lives better.

However, not all of us can start there, right? Many of us (maybe most of us?) don't care about those who need help like we should. So God, being patient with us, gives us an incentive to help them. He promises us that when we seek first His kingdom, and "do unto others" as we want them to do to us, and help "the least of these" in which we're actually helping Him... He promises that we'll get a reward for doing that. And He'll keep His promise, I know.

But let's also pray that He makes us more like Him. That He'll bubble up His love and goodness from deep inside of ourselves, so that we give out of a generous, thankful heart. I think actually BECOMING a generous, loving person is the greatest reward He can give us for obeying Him and helping people.

One step at a time.

God, thanks for teaching us to be more like You, patiently.