June 23

Fifth Sunday after Easter

(Or Rogation Sunday.)

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. S. James 1:27.

GOD, Who made all things one over against another, made rich and poor for each other's benefit. The duty of almsgiving is more blessed to us than to them. All which we have is God's; He calls it ours, that we may have the dear happiness of giving it to Him. The poor are more necessary to us than we to them. We are necessary to them for their bodies; they are necessary to us for our souls. God has constituted the rich as the representatives, the co-operators with His Providence, and channels of His bounties to the poor; their protectors against the worst temptations to crime for the relief of their indigence. The poor He has constituted the visible representative to the rich of His only-begotten Son, Who being rich, for us men and for our salvation "became poor." Who in their earthly lot exalted our human nature to the union with His Divine, gave to it its true surpassing dignity, and now vouchsafes to unite to Himself all human miseries except sin, dignifying each by its relation to Himself, and in the poor accepting as done to Himself what is done to them. Their hands are to us the hands of Christ. The poor stretcheth out his hand; what we give, Christ receives; we give them temporal things, we receive through them eternal. "I remember not," says S. Jerome, "that I ever read of one who died an evil death who had willingly practised deeds of charity; for he hath many intercessors, and it is impossible that the prayers of many should not be heard"