“But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:”
But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. The positive instruction is the most radical alternative to public giving: the anonymity so complete that even the giver's own self-awareness is minimized. The left-hand and right-hand language is hyperbole for the internalization of generosity — the giving that does not congratulate itself or keep score of its own record. This is the generosity described in Romans 12:8 as giving with simplicity (or generosity without ulterior motive). The discipline of secret giving trains the practitioner away from the self-congratulation that public giving enables and toward the genuine other-orientation that kingdom giving requires.
Church Fathers on Matthew 6:3
Above the Lord had spoken of righteousness in general. He now pursues it through its different parts.
He opposes three chief virtues, alms, prayer, and fasting, to three evil things against which the Lord undertook the war of temptation. For He fought for us in the wilderness against gluttony; against covetousness on the mount; against false glory on the temple. It is alms that scatter abroad against covetousness which heaps up; fasting against gluttony which is its contrary; prayer against false glory, seeing that all other evil things come out of evil, this alone comes out…
He who sounds a trumpet before him when he does alms is a hypocrite. Whence he adds, 'as the hypocrites do.'
Read all 19 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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