"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full."
Gospel of Matthew
There's a very powerful line in Paul's letter to the Philippians: "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied Himself taking a form of a slave." This same passage in the Jerusalem Bible says: "His state was divine, yet He did not cling to His equality with God, but emptied Himself to assume the condition of a slave. Let the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, be also in you."
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is telling His disciples that there are three things they can do to go deeper in their spiritual lives: pray, fast, and give alms. And yet, with each of these holy activities comes a warning. If you do them with the wrong intention, they become ineffective. If we pray to be seen by others, it becomes ineffective. If we give alms in order to boost our reputation with our peers, it becomes an ineffective gesture. If we fast for show or to receive praise, then it will not lead to a deeper spiritual life.
Why is this? Why do these holy actions become empty gestures when done with the wrong intention?
The reason is because they are being done for "self", and not for the glory of God. Each of these actions - praying, fasting, giving alms - are intended as forms of self-denial or self-emptying. To pray is to give up one's time. To fast is to give up one's comfort. To give alms is to give up one's security to benefit another. All are forms of self-emptying. When these sacred actions are performed to reap another form of self-gratification - to be seen, to be noticed, to impress others, to boost one's reputation - then we are not self-emptying at all. We remain "full of self". And it's this over-identification with "self", or our self pre-occupation that separates us from being in the presence of God.
We've all had encounters with selfishness, self-pity and the like. We all know the pain it causes as we find ourselves alone and alienated from God and those around us. Any over-identification with "self" has this effect.
I use to think that if I prayed a lot every day, then God would reward me. So my goal became to pray often so that I might receive God's blessings. The fact that I turned my prayer into a personal goal to achieve something for me made it ineffective. I was doing it for what I could get out of it. I was playing games with God.
Prayer, fasting and alms giving are only effective when we can get "self" and all of "self's" desires out of the way so that God can provide for us what we truly need. And what we need from God is often quite different from what we think we want.
St. Paul says to the Philippians: "Let the same mind that was in Christ Jesus be in you also" Allow our prayer to be an act of self-surrender to a God who loves us. Allow our fasting to be a self-emptying of the cravings and desires of the flesh. Allow our almsgiving to be an acceptance that all is gift, and in poverty and humility we return, as gift, part of God's boundless generosity. As St. John the Baptist said in the Gospels: "I must become smaller so that God may become larger." Or as St. Paul says in Galatians: "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me".
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