Reflection on the Gospel – Wednesday, June 18, 2025

This Gospel passage has been read for centuries on Ash Wednesday, at the beginning of Lent. It talks about almsgiving, prayer, and fasting as the three tools Christians can (or should) use to live a meaningful Lent that helps them prepare for Easter in the best way possible.

But today is not Ash Wednesday, and we’re not starting Lent. So maybe it’s better to focus on the first line of the Gospel, which might give us a good starting point for reflection.

Jesus says we should be careful not to practice our righteousness just to be seen by others.
In other words, we shouldn’t do good things just for show—to look good in front of people—but because we truly believe in them, whether anyone sees us or not, whether people think well of us or not.

And that’s where we run into a common and very human problem: we all like to look good, to have others think well of us. So, many times—maybe too many—we put on a kind of armor. That armor protects us and gives us the image we think others expect from us.

But sometimes that image is very far from who we really are.
And then we end up living a kind of double life—not to the extreme, but something like the famous story by Robert L. Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

I think it would do us good to take off that armor—to stop hiding behind appearances that sometimes become little lies in our lives.
It would be good to stop doing things just to be noticed, and instead try, with humility, to act out of sincerity—even with our flaws and struggles.
Not so much to earn a reward, but to live more simply and honestly.

Let’s keep fighting for the Kingdom, for justice and brotherhood,
but at the same time, let’s accept that we don’t always succeed in doing what we know we should, what we truly want to do as disciples of Jesus.