12th Sunday after Pentecost 23.8.20 Helping
others
The same action of helping someone - such as picking up a poor man from the road - can have different value in God's sight, according to who does the action and with what motive.
It is good to help others. There is what we call common humanity which should operate in everyone, even those who have no faith.
We are all made by God, and have something of His nature planted in us.
We are made in God's image and God is love, which means we must have some of that divine love working within us, even if it is impeded by sin and lack of faith.
At the core of our being we have the ability to love as God loves. This is where the compassion comes from, when it does come.
The love of God is constant and human love is not! So we do not always have the same intensity of compassion for each person. Sometimes we are glad to help; sometimes not.
We want to reach a state where we see people as God sees them, not clouded by external factors such as appearance.
Formed in the image of God we come to think and act as He does. To make the link even stronger still, we have God become Man, whereby He greatly expands the human capacity to love.
Our Lord is the Good Samaritan, helping all of us who have been robbed by the devil of our inheritance. Now He comes to restore that inheritance to us. We are once again children of God, in full favour with Him.
Our Lord helps us in our need; He also helps us to become people of sufficient compassion to want to help others.
Coming to know God better our hearts are unlocked and love of neighbour will emerge freely.
I help the man in the gutter because I love God! Not so much the man himself, whom I may not even know; but God first, then love for others will follow.
Thus we can help complete strangers because we see them in God's light.
Always we keep the main focus on God and what He wants from us.
And we go one stage further, as Our Lord did with us. We seek not just to have people well-fed and warm, but that they themselves will come to know and love God.
If we live in a state of grace our actions will be for God’s glory, even if we do not always allude to that. It is a matter of habit, good habit.
The more good we do the more grace increases and we are more likely to do even better still, and to more people.
So we nurture the state of grace, making the necessary effort to keep spiritually alert.
If we never pray or rely on natural goodness only, our good works will very likely not go far. It is likely that we will do occasional good deeds, and then think we are good enough.
Many try to bypass God. Loving other people is enough, they would say.
This has the appeal of simplicity, but it loses sight of the main point of our existence on earth - which is to know, love and serve God; to adore Him with thanksgiving.
We will love with greater force and accuracy if we go through God first. Attempts to help others might make matter worse if we exclude God from the process (eg cooperating in someone else’s evil act).
We want to get both the motivation and the actions in right balance, drawing charity from God, and returning it to Him in thanksgiving.
Discovering His wonders we become more focused on Him at all times.
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