The Generous Heart

Every one as he hath determined in his heart, not with sadness or of necessity.

Generosity of Christians

‘Tis the Full Measure

Generosity and full harvests go together in the Word of God. “Give” and the corresponding words, “it shall be given you,” are called sisters by one of the Fathers of the Church. He spoke in the spirit of the Gospel. The two acts of giving generously and receiving generously go together like sisters. When our Lord first joined these words in bonds of affection, He promised such a rich reward that generosity ought to be the most desired of all virtues. One need not be a farmer to appreciate His promise; if one has ever gone to the markets to make a purchase, then the richness of generosity’s reward will be fully appreciated. No such measures are ever found in the close bargains which the greedy marketers of the world are daily driving. “Give,” says our Merchant in the commerce of souls, “and it shall be given to you: good measure and pressed down and shaken together and running over shall they give unto your bosom.” A generous measure surely, if ever there was one! But mark the appropriateness: generosity is the reward of generosity.

‘Tis the Bountiful Harvest

Saint Paul had the same great ideas about generosity and its harvest. When exhorting the Corinthians to make generous contributions to their needy brethren in Jerusalem, he wrote, “He who sows sparingly, shall also reap sparingly; and he who sows in blessings, shall also reap blessings, every one as he hath determined in his heart, not with sadness or of necessity: for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound in you; that ye always, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.” The reward of generosity is not pictured as attractively as by our Lord, but the description is quite as full, and Saint Paul taxes his powers of expression to tell us of the great reward: “all grace in all sufficiency at all times in all things for all good work.” Saint Paul tries to say by insistently reiterating “all,” what our Lord put before us in that fullest of all measures, never seen except in this description and its fulfillment by Him. Besides describing the reward, Saint Paul describes for us the chief quality of generosity. It is free, spontaneous, smiling, finding its joy in giving. He points out, too, the brimming source of generosity; it lies in the determination of the heart.

‘Tis the Well-Spring of Life

The generous heart! Who is there that does not love generosity? It forms the largest part of the joy of our earliest memories and it blesses our latest ones with its genial presence. Generosity found its first shrine for us in the heart of a mother. In a less intimate and less touching way, it came home to us in the daily, self-sacrificing toil of a father. We rejoiced to see it in the gifts and games and in all the gigantic little things which fill the life of the young and which are often graced by unselfish generosity. Our friends especially were generous. That happy virtue beamed from their eyes, rang in their cheery voice, and thrilled through the warmth of their clasping hands. In the world of business generosity was all the more precious from the fact that it was so rare in its manifestations. In the professions it showed itself to us in ways we would not wish to forget. Our best statesmen and patriots exemplified generous devotedness in toil and suffering and death. Our doctors and lawyers came generously to us in our hours of distress. Pastors generous in service were responded to by people generous in support and united to form parishes generous in the worship of God. Child and parent, husband and wife, teacher and pupil, are brought together and blessed by the virtue of generosity. Like the wayside spring on a crowded thoroughfare it was ever bubbling forth and singing in its rich flow and glistening in the sunlight, dispensing joy, with no shortening of its stream, no lessening of its flood, no checking of its outward rush, but just giving, giving, giving, to everybody all the time.

‘Tis the Wealth of All Virtues

No wonder we have loved generosity, whose name like the magic word in the fairy stories lays bare to our gaze a thousand treasures of the past. Yet generosity has still other glories to its credit. It is the philanthropist of the virtues and endows them all so richly that they yield an ample revenue. The purse-strings of the heart are loosened by generosity, and there is no niggardliness in well-doing. The virtuous acts are not doled out reluctantly or sparingly, but stream out in floods, when generosity is present. Hope is full, and faith is unlimited, and charity is munificent and universal. The inward checks to virtue, selfishness and narrowness and low ideals and timidity are swept away; the checks which have an outward origin yield too, and the generous heart rises above likes and dislikes, above feelings and injuries, above prejudices of family or nation; all these ugly things disappear before the overrunning tide of generosity. They are petty trifles built up by little souls and are levelled into oblivion like children’s sand castles before the sea. Generosity will not be withstood. When we think of it, we think of the free breezes of heaven, the wide-spread fall of rain, the great stretches of the ocean, the infinite love of God which has given in time and shall never cease to give for all eternity.

Generosity of Christ

Vast as the Incarnation

The Incarnation is God’s act of generosity. It could not be greater. He gave, not the universe – He had already bestowed upon creatures that pale reflection of Himself; not the soul of man, an image indeed, still merely an image of Himself, but in the Incarnation God’s generosity was the greatest it could be; it was infinite. He gave Himself; He could not give more. He gave a Person of the Blessed Trinity; He could not give anything greater. There was, too, a thoroughness in the way He gave Himself. He emptied Himself. The Divinity generously obscured Itself in the infinitely lower shadows of humanity. More yet! This precious treasure was lavished upon us, not as refined gold, massive and exquisitely pure; such a gift would assuredly bewilder us. No, our God became that “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled.” The gold became coin and passed into currency among men and made them glad and purchased for them every good thing. God became Jesus, and in His generosity came very close to us. A child on the seashore taught Saint Augustine that God could not be contained by a human mind, no more than a shell would hold the ocean, and yet the Divinity which in the words of Saint Paul emptied Itself, was poured with all its contents into a Heart. There is the generosity of God, infinitely munificent in what He gives; infinitely condescending and accommodating in the way He gives.

Broad as the Magi’s Star

Nor was this largess to be stinted in any way by local narrowness or race prejudices. The messengers of Christ’s birth called everyone. The angels’ voices echoed over the hills of Bethlehem, and the star sent its rays far beyond the hills of Bethlehem. That starlight rose above the mountains of Judea and Palestine, spanning the intervening seas, and dawned upon the world. The human race became the chosen people. It was fitting that such generosity should meet with a generous response. The Magi came with their superb faith and tremendous courage and lavish outpouring of wealth. They gave certain gifts, but, as a preliminary, they offered all they had. Their first act after adoring the new-born King was to spread their treasures wide-open at His feet. The star of Bethlehem had taught its lesson well, and after lighting up the whole world with its rays, it shed perhaps its last light on the gifts of the Magi and lent new lustre to their gold.

Full as Christ’s Life

All through His life our Lord inspired the same generosity. He practised the virtue in its highest form and expected it from others. Saint Paul has quoted for us the principle of Christ, and it is the finest thing which could be said of generosity. “I have showed you all things,” said Saint Paul at the end of a most touching sermon, “how that so laboring you ought to support the weak and to remember the word of the Lord Jesus, how He said: ‘It is a more blessed thing to give rather than to receive.'” The Lord Jesus came to give. Others exist to work for themselves and their charges first of all, and then to work for others. Our Lord came to work for others. The human race was His mother and brother and sister. He gave all and gave generously. Not only in His multiplication of loaves did He have baskets of fragments over and above. In all His generous acts performed everywhere and at all times for all, without exception of nationality or belief, if we knew the whole story, we should find that the measure of His giving was the measure of the reward promised us, “pressed down, shaken together and flowing over.”

Wide as Christ’s Arms on Calvary

The ungenerous are known as grasping and close-fisted, whereas openness is the mark of generosity. The “opened treasures” put the Magi forever among the generous. The valiant woman is generous: “She hath opened her hand to the poor.” The world with all its goods is a mark of the generosity of God. “Thou open Thy hand and fill with blessing every living creature.” The openness is characteristic of our Lord. His hand was ever open in gifts and blessings. “Sell all thou hast and give” was His teaching and practice. His arms were opened wide to welcome the young and innocent as well as the sinful and old. And it is with generosity as with every other virtue; His heart found special, tender ways of teaching it. All His virtues reached their highest in the Passion, and there, too, generosity attained to perfection. “And I,” cried our Lord, “if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself.” The open hands and open arms of generosity got a new meaning from the Cross. He put Himself there to show that He wanted to die giving, to be fastened firmly in the action characteristic of generosity.

Lavish as the Sun in Openness of Heart

The sun is the most generous thing in the world of matter. Its fiery nature keeps it always radiating its energy. How long it will continue to do this is a question which puzzles scientists. Like everything generous, the sun has no selfish concern for its own future. It continues to pour out in all directions its life-giving heat and light. Every part of the world receives in abundance; seas of ice and wastes of desert sand, no less than plains of grain and fruit-bearing orchards. That openness of the sun and the royal largesses of its treasures may help us to realize the generosity of the Heart of Christ. Open hands and open arms were not enough. Generosity had further to go still. Generosity made the open Heart of Christ, and now has arrived at its fullest realization and is perpetuated in a most significant symbol. In the generous, open Heart of Christ is the rich, warm centre of our whole religious life. Thence radiates the fruitful and fostering grace of God, in never diminishing fullness, wasted, like the sunshine upon coldness and hardness or barrenness, or evoking in fruits of repentance or in new growths of holiness a response to that Heart’s lavish generosity.