March 7, 2026 - Joseph Gruber, Almsgiving

A powerful Lenten reflection on almsgiving that goes beyond simply giving, calling us into deeper mercy through prayer, fasting, and action. This message explores how almsgiving is rooted in generosity, addresses real needs like fatherlessness and broken families, and becomes a profound opportunity to encounter Christ in others.

MC: Adam Hohn

Parochial Vicar: Tyler Arens

Presenter: Joseph Gruber

Deacon: Rick Freedberg

Brought to you By: The Knights of Columbus

Jackson Michigan & Surrounding Area Catholic Parishes

Queen of the Miraculous Medal: https://queenschurch.com/

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St Joseph Oratory: https://saintjohnjackson.org/new-here/st-joseph-the-worker-oratory/

Our Lady of Fatima: http://www.fatimaparish.net/

St Rita: http://www.stritacatholicparish.com/

St Catherine: https://stcatherinelaboureconcord.org/

Direct, O Lord, our actions by Thy holy inspiration, and carry them on by Thy gracious assistance, that every word and work of ours may begin in Thee, and by Thee be happily ended. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen. I'm here to talk to you today about almsgiving. And I think we've all heard the expression that if you give a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day.

But if you teach a man to fish, you'll feed him for a lifetime. I like that expression. We'll talk more about that in a moment.

But there's another expression that I want to share with you that I think is even more poignant. And that is, if you give a man a fire, you warm him for a night. If you light a man on fire, you warm him for the rest of his life.

And that's what I want to do this morning. I want us all to be lit on fire this morning. We should be lit on fire on the topic of almsgiving.

So for the topic of almsgiving, I'm going to be looking at four different approaches to almsgiving, to understanding it, to getting our heads and our hearts wrapped around it. That's four things. Usually, they say for a talk, present three things.

So you have pieces of paper, half sheets of paper and pens. You can take notes because after the talk and after time for prayer, you'll be going back to the tables and you're going to be talking about the topic. And with four things to remember, taking notes will be helpful.

So take notes because it will help with the discussion later. So the four different approaches that I'm going to have for almsgiving this morning, and I'll go through them pretty quickly. Almsgiving is the fruit of two other practices.

Almsgiving is about feeding and teaching. Almsgiving is about addressing the fatherlessness of the world, the broken families of the world. And almsgiving is a privileged place of encounter with Christ.

So we'll talk about all four of those for almsgiving. So the first one, it's the fruit of two other practices. Last week, we talked about fasting.

And the week before, we talked about prayer, particularly intercessory prayer. This is the cool thing about these three Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. If we pray for other people, and if we fast, then what we have is we have an excess of the food we didn't eat, the money we didn't spend, the time we didn't waste.

And we have a heart that is now desirous of good for others. So you put those two things together, and what you get is the opportunity for almsgiving. If we actually pray for people, and we're actually fasting, those two things are supposed to combine into almsgiving.

That's how they're set up. That is how it's all designed. I think a lot of us, we don't fast very well.

We say, I'm not going to waste time today. But then we don't give our time away. We say, we're not going to waste food or waste money on a cup of coffee.

But then we don't give the food. We don't give the money. Like, we missed out on a big piece of what fasting was supposed to produce.

Almsgiving is a fruit of prayer and fasting. Everyone get that? So Adam asked earlier, who are you praying for? So if you're taking notes, maybe write down the names of a few guys that you're praying for. If you've been praying for people, your hearts are supposed to be opening up by their state, by their status.

A heart that is moved by the misery of others is a heart that is capable of acts of mercy. Almsgiving, this is another language lesson. What would a talk be without learning what words are? Almsgiving, alms is another word for mercy.

Mercy giving. Alms, mercy, they're essentially synonyms. And so when we talk about almsgiving, we're talking about the corporal works of mercy.

We're talking about the spiritual works of mercy. So who have you been praying for? And then how has your fasting actually benefited anyone else? Would be another thing to take note of. And if your fasting hasn't benefited anyone else, may I suggest for this latter half of Lent that we kick it up a notch.

That we actually connect the dots a little bit more closely. And that we have a more integrated approach to these Lenten practices. All right, so almsgiving is fruit of prayer and fasting.

Almsgiving about feeding and teaching. So I mentioned before that you can give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day. You can teach a man a fish, you'll feed him for the rest of his life.

And Pope Leo talks about this in his recent apostolic exhortation, Dilexite. Anyone read Dilexite? I know two guys who have. Anyone else? Dilexite? It was this weird like sort of chimerical apostolic exhortation.

Because Pope Francis apparently wrote most of it. And then obviously Pope Francis died before he promulgated it. So Pope Leo put it out.

Anyway, I read it with a couple of the guys here, John and Dennis, over the course of how long did it take us to read it? A long time. We're very slow readers. And it's a great, if you want a history of the church's almsgiving over the course of 2,000 years, give it a read.

It takes until paragraph 115 at the very end where he's talking about, now that we've gone through all of this, now let's talk about almsgiving today. And I want to read this a little bit. Paragraph 115, Pope Leo says, I would like to close by saying something about almsgiving, which nowadays is not looked upon favorably, even among believers.

Not only is it rarely practiced, but it is even at times disparaged. Let me state once again, that the most important way to help the disadvantaged, when a Pope says the most important, it's probably worth paying attention to what he thinks is the most important. So the most important way to help the disadvantaged is to assist them in finding a good job, so that they can lead a more dignified life by developing their abilities and contributing their fair share.

In this sense, quote, lack of work means far more than simply not having a steady source of income. Work is also this, but it is much, much more. By working, we become a fuller person.

Our humanity flourishes. Young people become adults only by working. The church's social doctrine has always seen human work as a participation in God's work of creation that continues every day.

Also, thanks to the hands, mind, and heart of the workers. On the other hand, so the most important way, he said, is helping people get a job. On the other hand, where this is not possible, we cannot risk abandoning others to the fate of lacking the necessities for a dignified life.

Consequently, almsgiving remains, for the time being, a necessary means of contact, encounter, and empathy with those less fortunate. So he's saying, by and large, the goal in every human society is for people to be able to work, to be able to participate in God's creative act day in and day out. That is an expression of mercy, is that invitation to work.

It is a dignifying invitation. So, teaching a man to fish is the most important thing. Giving a man a fish is also a necessary thing.

This is also something that, for some people, they will always be the kind of people who need fish, whether it's because they have some sort of disability, whether it be because of some other unfortunate circumstance of life. There are some people, like Jesus said, the poor you will have always with you. And so, this lens of we can give fish and we can teach fishing is, I think, helpful for almsgiving.

Let's take a moment and reflect on our own lives. Who in our lives fed us fish when we were in need? Like, who has been able to respond to our miserable condition? Write down a name or two of somebody that you're thankful for. I see so few pens moving right now, it's making me think that I didn't say what I said.

I think I did. So, someone who has shown mercy to you, someone who has fed you when you were hungry, someone who has visited you when you were in prison, somebody who has tended to you while you were sick. And then also reflect on who taught you how to work, who inspired you, who gave you a sense of purpose, who let you know that you had dignity, who thought that you could develop.

Take a moment. These are people to pray for out of gratitude. It's a helpful thing to do, and that conditions our hearts to understand that there's a lot of receiving in this life as well as giving.

But with the giving of fish and the teaching of fishing, it would be also good to point out two other ways of giving alms. They're a little bit more remote, but that doesn't make them bad. So, we can also give to organizations who feed and to organizations that teach.

So, organizations that feed. So, one of my friends is a videographer, and he did some pro bono work for a guy who runs a prison ministry because he said, I am not going to be able to visit a prison and do ministry there, but I can give my time and my talents so that this guy can be funded so that he can go and visit the imprisoned. This expression, some, I want to get this right, because I get this confused all the time.

Some give by going and some go by giving. Some give by going and some go by giving. And so, this is an opportunity too to express almsgiving.

It's to support an organization that either is practicing the core role for spiritual works of mercy, so supporting a school, supporting an apostolate, or supporting something that is, yeah, so something that is either doing the teaching or something that is doing the feeding. Another angle to address the question of almsgiving. When we look at scripture, the way that it is most often talked about in the Old Testament and in the New Testament is that the problem isn't usually the poor as a category.

The problem is usually phrased as the widow and the orphan and the stranger and the outcast. These are the categories that scripture usually uses for those needing alms. The widow and the orphan and the stranger, these are the people who are in a miserable condition.

And think about that. Why are they in a miserable condition? They're in a miserable condition. Who is missing in the picture when we're talking about widows and orphans? The father.

The father is the one that's missing. And that is the condition that should be moving our hearts by the miserable condition of being fatherless. It's a failure of fathers when there is a lack of food.

And it is a failure of fathers when there is a lack of teaching how to obtain food. And that's a miserable thing. Gentlemen, we live in Jackson.

Jackson County, the last time I checked, had the highest number of children in single-family homes per capita. In the state of Michigan. Gentlemen, it is very possible we have a fatherhood problem here in Jackson.

And this is supposed to move our hearts. The ancient Roman practice of exposure. Does anyone know what the practice of exposure was? Fred? I do.

Everyone wanted a child, you just leave them out? Yeah, if you have an unwanted child, just leave them out to die. You expose them to the elements. You take them outside the city walls and leave them.

And the early Christians, do you know what they did? They picked them up. They took the babies in. They adopted children.

They responded to the crisis of fatherhood when a Roman father said, I don't want this child. A Christian family would take that child in. We have a massive fatherlessness problem in our country and in our town.

And we don't talk about it very much. It's a very fascinating thing. I've been here for, I think, eight years.

And I keep expecting there to be conversations more around the topic of fostering children and adopting children. And maybe it's all happening more hush-hush because people who are doing it, they don't want any attention. But as a community, I think we need to be talking about this more.

I think we need to be actually a little bit more strategic about this. Just a thought. This is also what the Knights of Columbus is for.

Father Michael McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus specifically to take care of widows and orphans. The reason why the Knights of Columbus sell life insurance policies is so that when the father dies, the widows and the orphans are cared for because everybody's been pooling their money in these insurance monies. That is at least the idea behind it.

And in order to do this, we actually need to be banded together as brothers. If we want to address the fatherlessness of the world, we need to be joined together as brothers of one father. And that's why we gather for CORE.

That's why the Knights exist. That's why we gather every Sunday, because we are brothers. So take a moment and write down the name of a brother or two from another mother that you have.

Because if we don't know who our brothers are, it's going to be really hard to do any of the works of mercy. They weren't designed to be done solo. Jesus sent people out two by two for a reason.

So take a moment. Who are the brothers that you actually want to practice mercy alongside? Who are the brothers that you actually want to be engaged in the act of either feeding or teaching how to obtain food? Okay, almost giving, talked about it as fruit of prayer and fasting. We talked about it as feeding or teaching.

We talked about it as addressing fatherlessness. The last one, it is a privileged place to encounter with Christ. And in a moment, I'm going to invite you to spend some time with the gospel for tomorrow, about half of the gospel for tomorrow.

Tomorrow's gospel is really long. Because it's from the gospel of Saint John and John the evangelist. When he tells a story, he tells long stories.

So this is going to be the woman at the well. And the woman at the well is a woman in Samaria. She's coming to the well in the heat of the day.

When do people get water in the ancient world from the well? In the morning, right, because it's not hot. The only people who get water from the well in the middle of the day are the people who feel like they can't be with everyone else in the morning. They are the outcasts.

The Samaritan people are sort of cast off from the Jewish people. They are the remnants, interbred with pagans of the 10 northern tribes. And the Jewish people look down on the Samaritans.

So she is of a people looked down upon. And she is looked down upon by her own people. She is probably the lowest rung of the social ladder in that town.

This is the wild thing. When Jesus meets her, he doesn't say, I'm here to fix all of your problems right off the bat. The first thing that he does is he asks her for water.

The first thing that he does is he gives her an opportunity to practice mercy toward him, which boggles her mind. And it should boggle our minds as well. Last week, we talked about how Jesus fasted in the desert and how insane that is because he's the creator of the entire world, the person who has the most right to all of the pleasures of the world, voluntarily gave up all of the pleasures of the world.

That's crazy. He puts himself in a position to hunger. He puts himself in a position to thirst.

Why? Because he wants us to have hearts that are moved by the misery of others. And he is willing to become miserable to stir that in us. Every day we go into a Catholic church, we look upon Christ crucified.

That is a miserable condition to be in, crucified. We do that so that our hearts continue to be moved by the misery of the world. And Jesus is there in the encounter with the woman at the well, and she doesn't even know who he is.

And the church teaches that when we practice almsgiving, we are meeting Christ in the poor. That Christ, who took upon himself the poverty of the world, continues to do so in the poor of the world. And he invites us to imitate his heart that is moved by our misery so that we can practice misery, practice mercy towards those who are in need.

So, almsgiving, fruit of prayer and fasting. If you haven't noticed almsgiving ticking up while you've been praying and fasting, it means you're probably doing it wrong. Almsgiving, you can think about it as feeding and teaching.

If you can think of ways to feed both the physical body, it's also the soul. Like, how many elderly are left unvisited? Day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out? How many elderly who are imprisoned in a certain sense by circumstance and they go ignored? They need to be fed just by our time, which is why it's so beautiful that Mark Schisler takes men to pray the rosary with some of the elderly and why we should try to do more of that. Almsgiving also as addressing fatherlessness.

All of us had fathers that were not perfect, some less perfect than others, and when we look out into the world and see people in desperate situations, we can realize there were failures here, the family broke down, but this is an opportunity for the family of God to be made manifest, for me to actually demonstrate that this is a brother or a sister before me. And almsgiving is a privileged place to meet our Lord. Those are the four lenses for almsgiving I wanted to give you this morning.

And then the other thing I want to give you this morning is some time to pray with the gospel for tomorrow. Again, it's about half of the gospel. So what we'll do is we will take probably like five or six minutes.

I'm going to read it out loud and then we'll have some silence for speaking to our Lord about this passage on our own. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Come Holy Spirit, teach us how to pray. Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son, Joseph. Jacob's well was there.

Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon. A woman of Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her, give me a drink. His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, how can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink? For Jews use nothing in common with the Samaritans.

Jesus answered and said to her, if you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him, sir, you do not even have a pocket, and the cistern is deep. Where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this cistern, and drank from it himself, with his children and his flocks? Jesus answered and said to her, everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst.

The water I shall give will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty, or have to keep coming here to draw water. We'll take five or six minutes.

(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)