Friday of the First Week of Advent
There were two blind men in Matthew chapter 9 who followed after Jesus for some time crying out “Son of David, have pity on us!” Eventually, Jesus entered a house, and they followed him, begging stubbornly for his intervention. Jesus tested their faith, asking them: “do you believe that I can do this?” After they replied in the affirmative, Jesus touched their eyes and healed them miraculously. He then “warned them sternly” (ἐνεβριμήθη, comminatus est) not to tell anyone about this miracle. He wanted to keep this good deed a secret, but they were stubborn men, and they went off and told everyone about it anyway. Perhaps those men had not heard Jesus saying “when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you” (Matthew 6:3-4).
There are times for good deeds to be done publicly, and there are times for them to be done privately. St. Nicholas, the legends tell us, gave alms secretly. He threw a bag of gold coins through the window of a poor man’s house in the middle of the night, which that man then used to marry off his eldest daughter. That man had two other daughters, though. On another night, St. Nicholas secretly threw in a second bag of gold, at which point, that man decided to keep watch. Eventually, he caught St. Nicholas in the very act of throwing in a third bag of gold. The man fell to his knees and thanked St. Nicholas, who ordered him not to tell anyone. Well, that man must have been stubborn, too, because he told everybody, and it became a famous story throughout all of Christendom.
When you help your neighbor, even if it’s only with a prayer, remember: sometimes it’s better to keep it quiet.