“That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.”
So that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. The reward from the Father who sees in secret is the counterpart to the reward received from human applause: one is visible, public, and immediately received; the other is invisible, private, and eschatologically received. The Father who sees in secret is not merely privacy-respecting but actively present in the secret space — he sees what no human audience can see, and his seeing is the context for the reward. 1 Samuel 16:7 says the Lord looks on the heart; Matthew 6:4 extends this principle to the Father's perception of the motive behind the giving. The reward is not specified here, consistent with the principle that the one seeking human approval has defined what counts as reward.
Church Fathers on Matthew 6:4
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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