“Your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you openly” (Matthew 6:18)
Our Lord Jesus Christ in one of the first chapters of the Gospel of Matthew addresses those who fast and speaks about the fasting that is pleasing to God. “Do not be like the hypocrites” — do not fast like the hypocrites, do not pray like the hypocrites, do not do charity like the hypocrites. People brought all these things done in the Name of God to earth and began to do them only in front of people. Our Lord sees with sadness how everything that should come from God and strive for Him has sunk into the ground; He constantly tries to divert people’s eyes and hearts from this sinful world to heaven.
Alms — straight to God, past people; prayer — directly to God, past people; fasting — straight to God, past people — their opinions and their praise. “Woe to you, Pharisees, hypocrites,” He says to those who brought God down to earth in order to achieve earthly glory.
“You receive glory from one another, but do not seek the glory that is from the one God” (John 5:44).Our Savior, worthy of all glory and honor, loved to repeat to Himself that He He did not seek His will or His glory. He constantly sees unworthy, pitiful and defiled people, seeking only this human glory! And this search leads to hypocrisy. The Lord wants to tear the souls tied to it from the earth and direct them, like an arrow fired at a target (Isa. 49:2), straight to the One who sees the secret and does not accept hypocrisy. The righteous Lord calls out to people who pray and fast for show, telling them: “Not before men… but before your Father who is in secret.” The Lord wants to gather, direct, and rivet all eyes to His and our Father, who sees in secret, so that we may know, instead of external piety, that ineffable communication with the Father, which is known in secret, in the innermost depths of the unhypocritical soul.
Your Father is in secret, He will answer you and will reveal himself to you in secret. And He, who sees the secret, sees not only your weak prayer, the inner fasting of your soul, but also its sinful secrets. Penetrating into all the unclean depths of your soul, He does not turn away from you. Man would turn away, but God would not: on the contrary, day and night He stretches out His hands to the rebellious people (Is. 65:2) in order to call stubborn hearts to Himself and reward seeking hearts with that communication with Him, which pours new life into them and builds out of them a dwelling place of God(Eph. 2:22).
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