True charity

We live in a rapidly changing society. Over the last few years we have witnessed, among other innovations, a very fast expansion in communication technology.

No fewer than 70.4 per cent of the population have a mobile phone, 18.3 per cent use the internet at home (NSO 2003) while many more have access to the web at work or at school. We have become a society that is eager to communicate, to create new spaces and new forms of communion.

Quite a few of us now use SMS, MMS, ICQ and e-mails to communicate. This shift in our mode of communication has subtly transformed our conceptions of time and space that have consequently become restricted.

Paradoxically, the tools that we have been using to strengthen our communities, to shorten distance and to speed up our everyday transactions have, in turn, affected us by making life more hectic and, thus, making time more precious.

Admittedly, this is a simplistic way of looking at the changes that are occurring in our society. There are many more factors that are hastening change. However, we should read this eagerness for communion as a sign of our times.

Living in a community means discovering oneself in relationships and celebrating individuality as a true gift to each other. It means becoming aware of one's own blessings and of the hardships others may be passing through.

Indeed, most of us do care for the so-called "less fortunate". As a community we have always shown that we are sensitive to the needs of others, especially when it comes to donating money.

Show business and communication technology have made it easy, maybe too easy, for us to give money. At times we give money without even knowing to whom or to which organisation our money is going. Sometimes we have even let show business manipulate and confuse the concepts of solidarity and charity with too much emotionalism and materialism.

While donating money or goods to those who need our material support is intrinsically a good thing, the process has at times been abused and vilified. Charity derives from the Latin word caritas, meaning love.

Indeed, charity only makes sense if it is understood as an act of love. What kind of love is it when "charity" is the product of mass hysteria or when the act of donation becomes extraneous to oneself?

If our acts of charity are made in a conscious and deliberate way they will bear much more fruit for in the act of giving we will be receiving. This is more so when what we give is from our own and not from what we consider to be extra.

While money is surely an important and solid contribution, without which meritorious philanthropic organisations cannot operate, we have something that is far more precious and that only the few dare to share with others - time.

There are many initiatives one can join, from visiting or offering one's service to the old and the sick to contributing to the formation of children and youth.

We are moving into a society where the "I" becomes more important than the "we". True charity is when the good of the weak one is taken into consideration, even if at times this means denying oneself, for there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for others (cf. Jn 15-13).

(The annual collection for the Church's charitable activities and homes will be held in all churches this weekend.)