Not Just Niceness: Sacrificial Love and the Secret Reward of Lent
MASS Audívit Dóminus
LESSON Isaias 58: 1-9
GOSPEL St Matthew 5: 43-48; 6: 1-4
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
Beloved in Christ,
Welcome to this Holy Mass on the third day of Lent — the first Friday after Ash Wednesday. Already the Church, solicitous for our salvation, recalls us to first principles. She reminds us that the whole reason for this holy season is not self-improvement for its own sake, nor religious display, nor spiritual heroics — but love. Sacrificial love.
Perhaps, by this third day, some of you are already beginning to struggle with the discipline you elected for yourselves. Three days without something to which you were accustomed. Three days of restraint. Three days of conscious self-denial.
Do not give up yet.
Three days is not long enough for anything to bed in. Three days, in fact, is often the most difficult point. Those who have abandoned harmful habits will tell you that the first days are the fiercest. The body protests. The appetite clamours. There are, as it were, withdrawal pangs.
So too in Lent. When we remove from ourselves some attachment — whether to food, comfort, habit, distraction — we feel the absence acutely. But that discomfort is not failure. It is purification beginning its work.
On Ash Wednesday, Holy Mother Church placed before us penance — the restoration of our relationship with God. Yesterday, she strengthened us with the image of spiritual combat and called us to prayer — like faithful soldiers under command. Today, she advances the third great pillar of Lent: almsgiving — sacrificial charity.
The Station today in Rome is at the Basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, dedicated to Saints John and Paul — not the Apostles of the New Testament, but two Roman brothers whose names are solemnly enshrined in the Canon of the Mass itself. Such was the weight of their witness that the Church of Rome placed their names in that most sacred roll of honour, alongside Apostles and martyrs.
They were brothers — as were Cosmas and Damian, also named in the Canon — but each pair distinct. John and Paul are remembered particularly for their charity.
In the fourth century, they served in the imperial household, attached to Constantia, daughter of Constantine. When Julian the Apostate ascended the throne in 360 AD and attempted to restore paganism, Christianity once more became dangerous. John and Paul, who had opened their home as a place of Christian worship and charitable outreach, refused to renounce their faith. They were martyred in their own house. Upon that very site a basilica was later built. Their home became a church; their blood sanctified the ground.
The stational churches are never arbitrary. The saints of the day illuminate the liturgy; the liturgy interprets their witness. Today’s Mass speaks of almsgiving and sacrificial love — and before us stand two brothers known for piety and charity unto death.
The Epistle from Isaias strikes hard. The Lord rebukes those who fast outwardly while remaining inwardly disordered. They fast — yet they quarrel. They humble their bodies — yet they oppress their debtors. They afflict themselves — yet they indulge their anger.
“Is this such a fast as I have chosen?”
The fast God desires is not self-referential. It is not about the process alone. It is about transformation. It is about loosening the bonds of wickedness, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the poor.
In other words: fasting must become love.
Sometimes, during Lent, we fast for a particular intention — for the conversion of a loved one, for the faithful departed, for some grave need. And we may grow impatient. We cannot see the result. We cannot measure the effect. We may even ask: what is the point?
At such moments we must remember: it is not all about you. It is not all about me.
The value of fasting does not lie in visible outcomes. It lies in fidelity. It lies in offering. It lies in aligning our will with God’s will. When done with right intention, even hidden sacrifice participates in the redeeming love of Christ.
And then the Gospel presses further.
“If you love those who love you, what reward shall you have? Do not even the publicans this?”
These are not gentle words. Our Lord dismisses mere niceness as insufficient. Christianity is not about being a pleasant person. Niceness may be an incidental fruit, but it is not the essence.
The essence is to love as God loves.
To forgive repeatedly. To turn the other cheek. To give beyond what is comfortable. To love enemies. To bless those who curse.
That is costly. That is sacrificial. That wounds pride.
Almsgiving, properly understood, strikes at the root of vanity and selfishness. Notice how Our Lord speaks: “When thou givest alms…” Not if. When.
Almsgiving is not occasional generosity. It is habitual stewardship. From the beginning, man was appointed steward of God’s gifts. What we possess is entrusted, not owned absolutely. The early Christians, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, held what they had with a sense of common responsibility, sharing according to need.
True almsgiving costs something. If it costs nothing, it means little. It must affect us. It must touch our security. It must bruise our self-love.
And yet we do not act for reward in a mercenary sense. We act because God is faithful. Those who are faithful to Him discover His fidelity to them. “Thy Father, who seeth in secret, will repay thee.”
Repay — not always in visible prosperity, but in grace. In deeper union. In interior freedom.
The Prayer over the People asks that no adversity harm us if no iniquity dominate us. The true danger is not hardship. It is sin. The true defeat is not suffering. It is selfishness.
Thus the Church teaches us today that Lent is meant to change us. We are supposed to improve. We are supposed to become more loving — more selfless — more ready to sacrifice.
“Be ye therefore perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
We shall never achieve perfection in its absolute sense in this life. But we can strive more sincerely. We can fast more purely. We can give more generously. We can forgive more readily.
Perfection in God is fullness of love.
So let us persevere beyond these first three difficult days. Let us allow the withdrawal from self-indulgence to make space for charity. Let us ensure that our fasting is not about ourselves, but about God and neighbour.
And then — quietly, unseen — the Father who sees in secret will indeed reward.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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