Mt 6,1-6.16-18 – Wednesday of the XI Week of Ordinary Time
“Beware of practicing your good works before men to be admired by them.” With these words Jesus is not simply giving us a norm of behavior. It’s going much deeper. In fact, he warns us against one of the subtlest temptations of spiritual life: living for the approval of others rather than the truth of our heart. Very often it is not the actions that are wrong, but the motivations that support them. Good things can be done for the wrong reasons.
One can pray, do good, sacrifice, even serve others, and yet have the true goal of being noticed, appreciated, or recognized. In this way, even the holiest realities risk turning into tools to feed our ego. Jesus takes as an example the three great pillars of Jewish religiosity: prayer, almsgiving and fasting. All good and necessary practices. But the decisive question is not what we do, but who we do it for. We can pray to be seen as religious people instead of to meet God. We can give alms to feel better than others instead of out of love for others.
We can fast out of vanity or personal discipline, without that gesture making us more supportive of those who suffer. The problem with appearance is that it accustoms us to living outside of ourselves. Our happiness ends up depending on the gaze of others, on the consensus we receive, on the image we manage to build. But those who live like this are never truly free, because he becomes a slave to the opinion of others. This is why Jesus invites us to rediscover the value of secrecy. Not because what we do must be hidden, but because the most important place of faith is always the heart. That’s where God looks. It is there that the authenticity of our life is decided.
The Father sees in secret because he sees what no one else can see: the profound intentions from which our actions arise. Holiness does not consist in doing extraordinary things before men, but in doing even the simplest things before God. When we stop living for appearances and start living in truth againthen our faith becomes authentic and our works become truly works of love again.
Wednesday 17 June 2026 – (Wednesday of the XI Week of Ordinary Time – Even Year)
