Purity of Intent

“Divine goodness is incarnated in the person who opens his heart to it; it radiates from him. The will that advances in virtue, the soul that progresses in sanctity is a dynamic force that stirs also the recipient of good, disarms and encourages him. Through the God-reflecting act of a fellow creature, God and his holy will become apparent, and the receiver of good in his turn recalls his own potentialities for good, feels himself summoned by God. But isn’t it dangerous to execute God’s will with the desire to resemble ‘the salt of the earth,’ the ‘city set on a mountain,’ ‘the light of the world’? Precisely; hence the warning: ‘Do not give to dogs what is holy, neither throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet and turn and rend you’ (Matt. 7:6). ‘What is holy’ is the flesh from the sacrificial altar. When the sacred rites are over, beware of flinging the remains to dogs! Neither should he who has ‘pearls’ cast them before swine, those half wild herds like the ones we encounter in the incident at Gerasa, who (enraged to discover that they are not edible) only trample upon them and furiously turn on him who has flung them.

These parables clearly warn against indiscriminately presenting the mystery of divine life to the crowd. One must never allow it to be profaned, must avoid goading the general sense of earthliness until it becomes a hungry, disappointed beast that turns upon one in fury. A warning to be prudent, for men are as they are; the Lord is no idealist. But the admonition goes deeper. This more perfect justice must, above all, be selfless. The Lord warns us also to guard against ourselves, against the deeply rooted human traits of vanity, complacency and egoism.

‘Therefore when thou givest alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do . . . that they may be honored by men. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward. But when thou givest alms, do not let thy left hand know what thy right hand is doing, so that thy alms may be given in secret . . .’ (Matt. 6:2–4).

...We have it again in the words: ‘And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, who disfigure their faces in order to appear to men as fasting. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward. But thou, when thou dost fast, anoint thy head and wash thy face, so that thou mayest not be seen fasting by men, but by thy Father, who is in secret; and thy Father, who sees in secret, will reward thee’ (Matt. 6:16–18).

...‘Again, when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites, who love to pray standing in the synagogues and at the street corners . . . go into thy room, and closing thy door, pray to thy Father in secret; and thy Father, who sees in secret, will reward thee’ (Matt. 6:5–6).

...In these teachings of Christ one often repeated word gives us pause: reward. Contemporary ethics have declared: The motive of recompense belongs to a lower moral plane than that to which we have progressed. The superior modern has no use for it.

Obviously, the claim is not void of truth. If I perform an act in order to reach some particular goal, I am necessarily somehow bound to the connecting link between its means and its end. If though, I do it simply because it is right, I am not even conscious of means or end, but only of its ethical sense, the fulfillment of duty. In the first instance I am bound by practical necessity; in the second I am also bound, but differently, in conscience, freedom. I can attain the end without freedom, but the sense never. There is something rich, magnanimous, kingly in freedom of this kind which considers itself degraded by the mere thought of ‘payment.’ The purely moral value has majesty. When I do something good, that good bears its own sense within it; it needs no further justification. Indeed, any additional motive would only lessen its intrinsic worth. The purity of the act is threatened by thought of ‘reward.’ I do not want to do a thing for reward; I prefer to do it for its own sake, which for me is sufficient. We cannot but agree. Yet Jesus speaks of reward—repeatedly and at decisive moments.

At this point we realize how much depends upon our own personal acceptance of Holy Scripture as the word of God. If I see in the Bible only a profound religious text, I most likely resort to my own discernment and interpret it myself. In so doing I am almost bound to conclude that the idea of virtue for the sake of reward is a remnant of the old, still unpurified morality, and that on this point Jesus’ ethics have since been surpassed.

If, however, I accept a priori every word of the New Testament as the word of God, then, seeing how much emphasis Jesus places on reward, particularly here where he is proclaiming the very essence of Christian behavior, I conclude that the idea of reward must be profounder than most moderns suspect, and that underlying these teachings’ ethical intent there must be a subtler motivation that completely escapes the attention. And there is. As we understand it, what the New Testament says is this: At the root of your ‘pure ethics’ lurks the possibility of a monstrous pride that is particularly difficult to unmask. To desire good for its own intrinsic dignity, and so purely that the pleasure of goodness is the sole and entirely satisfying motive behind our virtue—this is something of which God alone is capable. Only God can perform good in the pure freedom of self-expression; only he finds fulfillment rather than self-denial in majestic magnanimity. Yet modern man has assumed this prerogative for himself. He places the moral attitude and the divine attitude on a par. He has so determined the moral attitude that the ego behind it can only be God, tacitly taking it for granted that human ego, indeed all ego, actually is God. Here lies the moral pride of the age, at once as terrible as it is tenacious.

Jesus’ idea of reward is a warning-call to humility. He says: You man—with all your possibilities of perceiving and desiring good—you are nevertheless creature! With all your possibilities of free choice, you remain creature! Anselm of Canterbury wrote of this moral danger. The almost illimitable possibilities of free choice tempt man to omnipotence without God, to feel himself God’s equal. It can be overcome by reminding ourselves that even in the practice of virtue we are subject to God’s judgment. The fruit of the good deed (of the moral decision and the effort spent on performing it) does not follow autonomously, but is God-given as ‘reward.’

But we must go still deeper.

The idea of reward can be undignified, but only when coupled with a false conception of God. The God of whom Jesus speaks is he who urges me to love him by enabling me to love with his divine power. It is from him that I receive both the love necessary for my act and its ‘reward’: his esteem, itself love. As genuine love grows it begins to say: I love God because he is God. I love him because he is worthy to be who he is. I wish my act to affirm him to whom the multitudes of the angels cry: ‘Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and divinity and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing’ (Apoc. 5:12).

And suddenly all thought of reward has vanished. No, it is still present in the humility of the beginning, but vanished as a direct motive, and that to which autonomous virtue aspired but could not attain unaided is accomplished: pure good for its own holy sake. Never has purity of intent been more exalted than in the bearing of the saints, who completely overlooked themselves in their burning desire to be possessed by God for God’s sake. Only by not aspiring to that purity which is his alone, were they able to avoid running amuck in delusion and pride.”

~Romano Guardini