On giving

Charity is love. Love is more than giving money. It is not enough to respond to appeals for charity by dipping into one's purse. Doing charity without giving attention to the causes of the absolute and relative poverty is an incomplete act. In terms of responding to the needs of others which underpin the appeals for charity, we Maltese are foremost in the world in generosity.

Be it public appeals for aid in Malta or abroad, donations invariably flow fast and without murmur. Compassion and generosity combine within most of us to make us demonstrate an abiding concern for our near-or-far neighbour through monetary charity.

In Malta, we do not believe we have many who can be said to be among the absolute poor of the world, who do not have even the basic means of subsistence, though it may be that there are more of them than we think. We see grim examples of the absolute poor on the vision media. We experience some living examples among the boat people who land here in the course of fleeing towards what they hope will be a better material world.

We respond to their needs, although our response to boat people is at times laced with open or suppressed anger. We succour our absolute poor within the community.

On the negative side we have come to a point where generosity is tickled far too much by the prospect of winning a handsome prize. Where the poor are being turned into spectacles. Such interpretations of charity are worse than letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing.

Monetary charity does have a demonstration effect - knowing that others give affects others into giving. But it should never become a show, a circus. For anybody, least of all for Christians who are encouraged to symbolise and live the Gospel of Charity, sharing with others according to the teaching and inspiration of the Evangelists.

Fortunately, that inspiration reaches deeper than the showy aspect of modern charity. Most people give whatever they can give without expecting anything in return but the satisfaction of having helped someone whose needs are greater than theirs.

What may not be so widespread is an awareness of the extent to which poverty is the result of insufficient social justice, or of outright injustice. Many of us give individually without dwelling on the need to root out injustice and to promote systems and measures that make for a more just society.

In Malta we have a strong welfare state. But it needs revisiting to ensure that relatively more goes to those who need most, since it is an inherent part of social just that those who are not equal have to be treated unequally.

That those who have most need less, those who have much less need that little bit more than the rest.

In the countries from which we receive frequent appeals for help, there is often to be found social injustice, government disregard and corruption.

Giving aid without raising a voice against that tripod of wrong and in favour of social justice is not enough.

The charity that is love comes from the heart.

Charity that recognises injustice and wants to dent it and, ultimately, eradicate it has to come also from the mind.