The following is a part of a meditation series that I write with my wife, called Somedays’ Meditations. We started it in our home parish for our tweens, and we thought it would be helpful to folks online as well. You can read the meditations here, or you can visit https://christchurchmanlius.org/somedays-meditations to see them as a collected volume.

Scripture:

Jesus said, “Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven…Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

Matthew 6:1, 5-6

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Meditation:

Jesus wants us to do good things, but he also wants us to think about why we do good things. Do we help the people around us because we want to help them from the goodness of our hearts? Or do we want to help them because they’ll thank us (and it’s very nice when people thank us)? Do we want to be seen as a good person more than we actually want to help? Do we care more about the opinions of others than the opinion of God?

These are some tough questions, let me tell you! Adults struggle with these questions just as much as kids do. It’s hard to know why we really do things. Many of us like pleasing people, especially our parents or our teachers, and it really does feel good when people show us their appreciation. It’s not all that bad, either, to want other people to see the good things that we do and to thank us for them. Those kinds of feelings aren’t bad at all.

Even so, God wants us to look into ourselves and look at our motivations. If we are doing good things only because we’ll get some kind of reward in the end, then we’re still only focused on ourselves. We’re not actually growing closer to others. The whole point of living a good, religious life is to love our neighbors and God more fully, and to do that, sometimes we need to forget about ourselves. We do good because it is good to do good, not because we get anything in return.

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Prayer:

God, cleanse the thoughts of my heart by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, so that I might perfectly love you and glorify your holy name. Amen.