December 25

For charity to be genuine, it must be wholly independent of other people’s approval and any assumed rewards in the afterlife.

1

Be careful that you do not do your charitable giving before men, to be seen by them, or else you have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

Therefore, when you do merciful deeds, do not sound a trumpet before yourself, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may get glory from men. Most certainly I tell you, they have received their reward.

But when you do merciful deeds, do not let your left hand know what your right hand does, so that your merciful deeds may be in secret, then your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.

— Matthew 6:1–4

2

Not only is a penny from a poor widow equal to the greatest of gifts, it is only this penny that is true charity.

Only the toiling poor can experience the true happiness of charity. The idle rich are deprived of it.

3

Charitable institutions can be useless and harmful, on very rare occasions they can be useful, but they can never be moral. More than anything, such institutions show that those who establish them have a complete lack of awareness and understanding of compassion and the charity that flows from it.

4

Charity begins at home. If you have to go somewhere to be charitable, then that which you want to show can hardly be called charity.

5

The support that the rich openly provide to the poor is, at best, an act of courtesy, but in no way that of charity. A person asks: how do I get to so-and-so place? Courtesy demands we stop and tell him. Another asks us to give him 5 kopeks, or 5 rubles, or 50 rubles. If we have 5 kopeks to spare, or rubles, or tens of rubles, we should give them to him, and this will also be a case of courtesy, but this deed would have nothing in common with charity.

Material charity is only good when it is a sacrifice. Only then does the one receiving a material gift receive a spiritual gift as well.

If it is a surplus rather than a sacrifice, then it only irritates the recipient.