Ostentation

On a beautiful spring afternoon, a rich and generous man was seated in his drawing room; happy, he drank in the perfume of the flowers of his garden. He complacently enumerated all the good works he had performed during the year. At that recollection he could not refrain from casting an almost contemptuous glance at the house of one of his neighbors, who had been able to give only a modest coin toward the building of the parish church. For my part, said he, I gave more than a thousand crowns for that pious work; I carelessly dropped a 500-franc note into the purse that young duchess held out to me, in favor of the poor; I gave much for the charity festivals, for all sorts of lotteries, and I believe that God will be grateful to me for so much good that I have done. Ah! I was about to forget a small alms that I gave a short time ago to an unfortunate widow, responsible for a numerous family and who is also raising an orphan. But what I gave her is so little that surely it will not be on account of it that heaven will open to me. You are mistaken, suddenly answered a voice that made him turn his head: it is the only one that God accepts, and here is the proof. At that same instant a hand erased the paper on which he had written all his good works, leaving only the last; it carried him to heaven.

It is not, then, the alms given with ostentation that is the best, but the one that is given with all the humility of the heart.

Joinville, Amy de Loys.