What do justice and almsgiving demand with respect to wealth? Justice is not only about what others owe to us but also what we owe to others. Almsgiving takes on a special significance for the Church during Lent, but it does not end with Holy Thursday. As we celebrate the Easter season, let us reflect on Our Lord’s words: “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).
Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ says, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (19:24). Like all natural gifts from God, wealth is not a problem per se. Instead, problems can arise from how one relates to it — it can either become a hindrance or a boon to a person’s relationship with God and neighbor.
I could not help but recall Matthew 19:24 during one of the courses I taught last spring. We were discussing Aquinas’s explanation of private property in the Summa Theologiae II-II q. 66 a. 7. There, we encountered what I like to call the “Jean Valjean problem.” If a starving man steals a loaf of bread, is he guilty of theft? My students knew the answer was “no” but they were unfamiliar with Aquinas’s actual reasoning in the article. Notably, Aquinas does not claim that the starving man’s desperation exonerates him from culpability of sin. Rather, the starving man is in fact not guilty of theft at all. In essence, Aquinas reasons that when there is an abundance of a given good and a corresponding need in the poor, the superabundant good in question “is due, by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor.” Therefore, the starving man does not commit theft when he, in urgent need, takes the loaf of bread; it is justly his.
Moreover, Aquinas does not say that the starving man has to merit his daily bread. He is owed sustenance simply because he needs it. This point, in particular, shocked some of my students. Aquinas makes no mention of work or character requirements. What is owed is determined not by what one deserves but by what one needs. Or, as Dorothy Day once put it, “The Gospel takes away our right forever to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.”
Lent and Easter remind us to give and receive with open hands. Concupiscence engenders entitlement, and we can forget that everything is grace. All that we have is a gift from God. All that He asks in return is that we respond in generosity by sharing our blessings with those around us. This Easter season, may God’s grace perfect our pursuit of justice and charity, so that we might be generous to Christ Himself, present in our neighbors.
