“That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.”
That your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. The same concluding structure as the giving and prayer sections: the Father who sees in secret rewards what the Father alone sees. The three piety disciplines — giving, prayer, and fasting — are all grounded in the same theology: the Father is present and attentive in the secret space; his seeing is sufficient validation; his reward exceeds the human applause that the hypocrites pursue. The disciple who gives, prays, and fasts for the Father alone is the disciple who has oriented their entire interior life toward the only audience that ultimately matters.
Church Fathers on Matthew 6:18
The Lord having taught us what we ought not to do, now proceeds to teach us what we ought to do, saying, 'When thou fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face.'
A question is here wont to be raised; for none surely would literally enjoin, that, as we wash our faces from daily habit, so we should have our heads anointed when we fast; a thing which all allow to be most disgraceful.
Also if He bade us not to be of sad countenance that we might not seem to men to fast, yet if anointing of the head and washing of the face are always observed in fasting, they will become tokens of fasting.
Read all 15 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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