Leave Thy Gift Before the Altar: The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost in the Tridentine Rite

The traditional Roman liturgy exposes the hidden violence of anger and teaches that sacrifice cannot truthfully signify communion with God while the heart deliberately refuses communion with one’s brother. Yet its peace is not appeasement: it is the fruit of charity ordered by truth, justice and grace.

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost begins with a cry from Psalm 26: “Hear, O Lord, my voice, with which I have cried to Thee: be Thou my helper, forsake me not, nor do Thou despise me, O God, my Saviour.” The same psalm supplies the Communion antiphon: “One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.”¹ Between these two verses the whole spiritual movement of the Mass unfolds. The soul cries for divine help because it cannot purify itself; it ends by desiring only to dwell with God. Yet the Gospel reveals that no man can seek the house of God while knowingly making his own heart a dwelling-place for hatred.

The Collect gives the Sunday its governing doctrine:

O God, who hast prepared invisible good things for those that love Thee: pour forth into our hearts the affection of Thy love; that, loving Thee in all things and above all things, we may obtain Thy promises, which surpass every desire.

The Church does not merely ask that we should understand the duty of love. She asks God to pour into our hearts the affectus of His love: a settled inclination, disposition and movement of the whole person towards Him. Christian charity is not manufactured by determination alone. It is infused by God, received by the soul and exercised through the will. We are to love God in all things, recognising created goodness as His work, and above all things, refusing to prefer any creature, passion, grievance or private satisfaction to Him.²

This distinction governs everything that follows. The man who loves God above all things cannot make an idol of his own injury. He cannot cherish resentment simply because the injury was real. Nor can he claim to love God in his neighbour while treating that neighbour with contempt. The Collect therefore prepares us for both St Peter’s command to seek peace and Christ’s command to be reconciled before offering sacrifice.

The Epistle, taken from the First Epistle of St Peter, describes the visible form assumed by this infused charity. Christians are to be “of one mind in prayer, having compassion one of another, being lovers of the brotherhood, merciful, modest, humble: not rendering evil for evil, nor railing for railing, but contrariwise, blessing.” They must restrain the tongue, turn away from evil, do good, “seek after peace, and pursue it”. Yet St Peter immediately adds: “If also you suffer anything for justice’ sake, blessed are ye.” Peace, then, is not purchased by surrendering justice. The Christian is forbidden to retaliate in malice, not forbidden to defend truth. He must refuse hatred while remaining ready to suffer for what is right.

This is why the Sunday cannot be reduced to a lesson in being agreeable. The Apostle commands humility, compassion and blessing, but he also commands the faithful to “sanctify the Lord Christ” in their hearts. Charity does not make truth negotiable. It changes the spirit in which truth is defended. The Christian does not answer insult with insult, falsehood with falsehood or persecution with vengeance. He bears witness without allowing the adversary’s hatred to reproduce itself within him.

Dom Prosper Guéranger sees in this Epistle the supernatural cohesion of the Church. The charity infused at Baptism is a participation in the love of the Blessed Trinity. The Christian must therefore learn to love what God loves and, in a subordinate manner, those whom God calls to share His beatitude. The unity of the Church is not an organisational convenience or a fragile social truce. It is the created effect of divine charity joining many souls to Christ and, in Him, to one another. Avoiding formal schism, jealousy or open hostility is not enough. Charity must be active, generous and persevering. It must cause us to regard the spiritual good of our neighbour as something that concerns us personally.³

The Gospel takes us deeper, from conduct to the hidden movements of the heart. Our Lord declares: “Unless your justice abound more than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” The justice of the Pharisees could remain external. It could observe the prohibition against murder while harbouring the contempt, anger and hatred from which murder grows. Christ does not abolish the commandment. He carries it inward to its root.

St Hilary understands this as an entrance into a justice surpassing the merely external works of the Law. St John Chrysostom interprets the “greater justice” as the universality of Christian virtue made possible by grace. Christ requires more of His disciples, not because the Old Law was evil, but because the New Law gives the Holy Ghost, who forms within them the charity that the Law commanded but could not itself confer.⁴

Our Lord names the stages by which inward anger moves towards outward destruction. First comes anger entertained within the will. Then comes Raca, the dismissive expression of contempt. Finally comes the deliberate assault upon another’s dignity: “Thou fool.” St Augustine reads these as increasing degrees of sin: the passion held within, its eruption in a contemptuous sound, and its completion in an insulting judgment. St John Chrysostom notes that Christ descends even to what might appear the smallest details of speech because He commands His disciples to treat one another with reverence.⁵

The passage does not mean that every spontaneous movement of displeasure is a grave sin, nor that a Christian must remain unmoved in the face of wickedness. St Thomas Aquinas distinguishes anger governed by right reason from anger that overthrows it. Anger may serve justice when it is directed against vice, proportionate to the wrong, and ordered towards correction and the common good. It becomes sinful when it seeks unjust revenge, desires harm as harm, exceeds the measure of reason or hardens into hatred. Holy zeal wishes the sinner’s amendment; sinful anger enjoys the thought of his humiliation.⁶

This distinction is essential. The remedy for sinful anger is not indifference to evil. St Thomas teaches that fraternal correction may itself be an act of charity, because charity seeks to remove the evil of sin from one’s neighbour. Peace is not the suppression of moral judgment. It is the tranquillity produced when loves are rightly ordered. Justice removes obstacles to peace, but charity causes peace directly by uniting the wills of men in the good.⁷

The Sunday therefore condemns both vindictiveness and false irenicism. A man may avoid harsh words merely because he is timid, calculating or indifferent. He may boast of keeping the peace when he has simply refused the costly duty of correction. Conversely, he may describe every eruption of pride as righteous indignation. The test is whether his anger remains under reason and charity. Does he desire the correction of the wrong, the good of the offender and the honour of God? Or does he desire to wound, dominate and be vindicated?

The Gospel then moves from the heart to the altar:

“If therefore thou offer thy gift at the altar, and there thou remember that thy brother hath anything against thee; leave there thy offering before the altar, and go first to be reconciled to thy brother: and then coming thou shalt offer thy gift.”

St Jerome draws attention to the exact wording. Our Lord does not say merely that we have something against our brother, but that our brother has something against us. The command bears particularly upon the offender who has injured another and is tempted to substitute religious observance for restitution. St Augustine explains that when another has wronged us, we must forgive him; when we have wronged him, we must also seek reconciliation. St Gregory states the principle starkly: God will not accept sacrifice from those who wilfully remain at variance.⁸

Christ is not teaching that the validity of divine worship depends upon achieving an emotional or social harmony that may lie beyond our power. Reconciliation cannot always be completed: the other person may be absent, unwilling, unreasonable or even dangerous. The command concerns what lies within the penitent’s will. He must surrender hatred, acknowledge his own fault, make reasonable satisfaction and sincerely desire peace. He cannot control another’s response, but he must cease defending what is indefensible within himself.

Cornelius à Lapide brings the command directly to the Holy Eucharist. The Eucharist is at once Sacrifice, Sacrament and profession of the Church’s supernatural unity. To receive the Sacrament of union while deliberately nursing rancour is to contradict outwardly what one inwardly denies. The traditional Kiss of Peace, and the liturgical Pax derived from it, does not offer a moment of casual sociability. It expresses the peace flowing from the altar: Christ’s peace, grounded in truth, purchased by sacrifice and communicated through charity.⁹

The Secret develops the same theology. The priest asks God mercifully to receive the offerings of His servants, “that what each hath offered to the honour of Thy name may avail to the salvation of all”. The gifts are offered individually, but their fruit is sought for the whole body. The liturgy thus corrects the possessiveness underlying resentment. My prayer, sacrifice and suffering are not private religious property. United with Christ’s Sacrifice, they are ordered towards the good of the Church. The man who wants grace only for himself has not yet understood the altar.

Fr Leonard Goffine therefore insists that the justice surpassing that of the Pharisees cannot consist in outward works alone. Pious exercises become an empty shell when the heart remains governed by pride, envy or vengeance. His practical remedies for anger are characteristically direct: humility, meditation upon the meekness of Christ, foreseeing likely provocations, refusing to speak while passion rules, and praying earnestly for patience. Above all, the Christian must distrust the ease with which wounded self-love disguises itself as zeal for God.¹⁰

The mystical tradition carries the same teaching into the interior life. Father Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen calls this the Sunday of fraternal charity. Human beings, like earthen vessels carried together, inevitably strike against one another through weakness, difference of temperament and imperfect understanding. The remedy is not to demand a life without friction, but to enlarge the space occupied by charity. Humility makes room for another’s frailty and prevents self-love from interpreting every inconvenience as an intolerable offence.¹¹

Drawing upon St Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Father Gabriel explains that charity consists in bearing another’s defects without surprise and in noticing even the smallest good within him. This is not blindness. The saints often saw human faults more clearly than others because they saw them in the light of God. But they also saw the sinner as one for whom Christ died. Mystical union with God cannot coexist with contempt for the souls He loves. The nearer the soul comes to the divine fire, the more its love must take the form of patience, mercy and self-forgetfulness.

The Offertory sings: “I will bless the Lord, who hath given me understanding: I set God always in my sight; for He is at my right hand, that I be not moved.” This is the practical answer to anger. The soul becomes unstable when the injury fills its field of vision. It rehearses the insult, imagines the answer and returns repeatedly to the grievance. The liturgy restores proportion by placing God again before the eyes. The wrong may remain wrong, and justice may still demand action, but the offence ceases to occupy the throne that belongs to God.

After Communion, the Church prays that those filled with the heavenly gift may be cleansed from their hidden sins and delivered from the snares of their enemies. Resentment is often among the most hidden of sins because it can live beneath correct religious observance. It may even draw nourishment from a man’s conviction that he is defending doctrine, justice or honour. The heavenly Gift exposes what remains concealed and gives the charity needed to uproot it.

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost does not ask us to pretend that injuries do not matter. It asks something harder: that we should judge them beneath the judgment of God, seek justice without hatred, correct without contempt, suffer without retaliation and approach the altar without consciously withholding the mercy we ourselves need.

The one thing sought in the Communion antiphon — to dwell in the house of the Lord — cannot be separated from the command heard in the Gospel. The road to God’s house passes by the brother against whom we have sinned, the enemy whom we must forgive and the pride within ourselves that must be sacrificed. Only then can the gift placed upon the altar tell the truth.

Father Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen, OCD, Divine Intimacy, meditation 224, “Fraternal Harmony.”
Missale Romanum, Fifth Sunday after Pentecost: Introit, Collect, Epistle, Gospel, Offertory, Secret, Communion and Postcommunion.
Michael P. Foley, “The Loving Collect of the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost,” New Liturgical Movement, 25 June 2021.
Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, “Fifth Sunday after Pentecost.”
St Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, commentary on Matthew 5:20–24.
Ibid., commentary on Matthew 5:22.
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II–II, q. 158, aa. 1–3.
Ibid., II–II, q. 29, aa. 3–4; q. 33, a. 1.
Aquinas, Catena Aurea, commentary on Matthew 5:23–24.
Cornelius à Lapide, The Great Commentary, trans. Thomas W. Mossman, 2nd ed. (London: John Hodges, 1876), commentary on Matthew 5:23–24.
Leonard Goffine, The Church’s Year, “Instruction on the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost” and “Means of Preventing Anger.”

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