The Gospel for Wednesday of the 11th week in Ordinary Time is taken from Matthew 6 through the 6th verse and 16 through the 18th verse. Jesus said to his disciples, take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them. Otherwise you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen. I say to you, they have received their reward.

But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving will be secret and your Father who sees in secret will repay you. When you pray, do not be like hypocrites who love to stand and pray in the synagogue and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen. I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.

When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglected their appearance so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen. I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face so that you may not appear to others to be fasting except your Father who is hidden, and your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you. We tend to judge ourselves and others by our actions.

And certainly the Temple was a place that had many, many rules and regulations demanded people do them. And when people did them, they witnessed their conviction, their faith in God. But the thing that is lacking in that is any kind of real intimacy with God. It’s not our actions that he’s worried about. It’s about whether we know him and whether he’s able to reveal who he really is to us. And I think that said so beautifully in this passage, when more important than the money you give away or more important than the fasting you do, what really you need to do is go into your heart, your inner room where God lives and dwells, and there pray.

And we forget that prayer is as much listening as it is talking. Please ponder this reflection, and I will close with a prayer. Foreign the more you read the Scriptures, the more you understand that you are always looking for intimacy. Not our actions, but our heart, not our will and our mind, but our heart. What is it that you ask us most especially to do? It’s to love.

But what God is trying to say is, unless you know the love I have for you, you cannot be the lover the gospel calls you to be. And we ask this in Jesus name, amen.