We forget that, according to the designs of Providence, we have a duty to discharge toward the suffering and the needy! It is not for ourselves alone that God has given us riches. He wishes us to be his almoners, and the practice of charity is a strict duty.
The bestowing of alms is not only an evangelical counsel; it is often a precept. If the divine Ruler employs the most tender images in describing the merit of charity and the clearest and strongest promises when speaking of its reward, he has for the one who refuses to assist a brother, and leaves him in want, the severest of condemnations. Consider the parable of Lazarus and the rich sinner, but especially those terrible words: "I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat.... Depart into everlasting fire."[25]
Will a few gold pieces ostentatiously dropped each year into the collection boxes, a few contributions to other charities, which we are ashamed to refuse, suffice to save us from a similar sentence? What has become of that pious custom of tithes for the poor formerly found in rich families?
If, before entering the establishment of the fashionable jeweller, we would ascend to the garret of the indigent—we should often purchase fewer bracelets. It is not heart that is wanting in us, but reflection.
A young woman of whom some one was asking assistance for a family which had fallen into misery, and whose sufferings they were picturing to her, exclaimed with a simplicity which was her only excuse:
"Why, are there people who are poor? I did not know it!"
We know that there are poor people, but we too often forget it. Love of dress and the voice of vanity smother in us the love of the suffering members of Jesus Christ and render us deaf to the appeal of our unhappy brethren.
If we would only consider that by sacrificing a few yards of lace, or by consenting to appear twice during a season in the same dress, we might with the money thus saved assist several families each winter, we would more frequently be kind and charitable.
And that we may not forget the necessities of our brethren, let us assist them directly. Does not history tell us of more than one queen fashioning with her own hands garments for the poor, and laying aside the grandeur of her position to distribute them herself?
Ball-rooms, theatres, and the public drives are, unfortunately, not the only places in which we make a display. Fashionable dressing has become such a habit, such a necessity with us, that, as the Sovereign Pontiff remarked with sorrow, our holy temples often present the sad spectacle of women who call themselves Christians, and believe themselves such, coming to these holy places rather to rival one another in extravagance of attire than to excite to piety. Alas! what influence will our supplications have, if humility, that essential condition of prayer, be wanting. Ah! let us rather remain at home than go to the foot of the altar with the guilty desire of being admired.