Episode 122 - Almsgiving: Expanding the Heart (Part 3)

Almsgiving is one of the three pillars of Lent, but it is often misunderstood. It’s not just about donating money or giving away what we don’t need. True almsgiving is love expressed in action.

In Part 3 of the Catholic Money Talk Lenten series, Paul explores how generosity stretches our hearts and strengthens our trust in God. Through Scripture stories like the widow’s mite, the widow of Zarephath, and the rich man and Lazarus, we see that God doesn’t call us to comfortable generosity — He calls us to sacrificial love.

Paul also shares a powerful personal story about a moment when his family wanted to give but couldn’t, and how that experience changed their financial life. The lesson? Generosity isn’t created by earning more. It’s created by needing less.

When we shrink our “cup,” we create the margin that allows God to work through us.

Transcript

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Paul, Welcome to Catholic money talk, where we talk about all things money and finance, and we try to do it through a lens of being Catholic, where our ultimate goal is to one day be in Heaven with the Lord. I am your host. Paul Scarfone, thank you for being here today. Welcome back to Catholic money talk. Today, we're going to talk about part three of our 2026 Lenten series, at least the start of it. So today's topic is ALMS giving, expanding our hearts, and the first two weeks of Lent so two weeks ago, we started with part one, which was pray first the foundation of a faithful Lent. Then last week, we had part two, where we talked about fasting and cleaning the lens. So here we are today. We talk about ALMS giving and how it expands the heart. It expands our heart. But before we go any further, let's say a prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen, Heavenly Father. We thank you for this day. We thank you for all the ways that you love and bless us, Lord. We thank you for the season of Lent in which we can be reminded of all that you have done, all that you are doing in our lives. Lord, give us a sense of gratitude so that the way we treat others, the way we act, the way we pray, the way we worship You, Lord, reflects the gratitude that we have for all that you've done. And Lord, build us up. Allow us to trust you, allow us to be free, so that we can expand our hearts to care for those in our midst that are in most need of you, bless us this day, no matter what situation we find ourselves in, Lord, send us Your holy spirit. Come Holy Spirit, we ask all this in Jesus name, amen, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So almsgiving, it's not just writing a check. It isn't about being nice. It isn't just donating something you weren't using anyway. Alms giving is love expressed in action. It is an opportunity for us to be generous. And here's the real question for us, how do we know if we are generous? And one of the ways I like to encourage people, challenge people, to test this is, are you willing to give away that which you treasure the most? Right? Am I willing to give away that which I treasure the most? Sometimes that's money, sometimes it's our time. But are we willing to give it away that which we treasure the most, and we want to give until it hurts, and we see many instances of this in the Scripture. Because Scripture doesn't it doesn't celebrate comfortable generosity, right? Comfortable generosity. It highlights sacrificial generosity. It encourages us in generous love towards God and towards others. And almsgiving is different than the tithe. The tithe, it's part of our worship, right? 10% gross income off the top, we give it to God. I spoke about this in part one of this series when we talked about prayer, right? In one sense, the tithe is easy, right? It's not always easy to give, but it's easy to figure it out. We give it to where we worship and where we are formed. Alms giving that goes to other people and places that are dependent on our generosity. And many times, in order to give alms, we need to meet do some work. We need to shrink other places in our budget to be able to create that margin to give generously, right? And that's what we're going to focus on today. Giving requires trust, not not only in giving our tithe, but in our ALMS giving as well. When we give away what we have, it requires us to trust in the Lord, to trust that he will continue to provide. And trust is a virtue. It's a muscle of the soul, right? We've talked about this, and because it's a muscle of the soul, we need to work and exercise it over and over and over to build it strong. Giving works the muscle of trust, of trust in the Lord. We see it in the the widow with Elijah. I love this story. There's a famine. Elijah asks her to make bread for him from her last flour and oil, she barely has enough for her son and herself, right? She gives it away, and the Scripture tells us the jar of flour did not go empty, nor did the jug of oil run out, right? That was the promise Elijah told her, if you make me food, the Lord will not let your flour go empty, will not let your jug of oil go dry, right? She had to trust Lord. The Lord didn't give her storehouses first, right? He didn't give her like a bank a pile of oil, a pile of flour. He invited her to trust first. That's all ALMS giving. It's not. Abundance giving. It's not giving from our excess. It's giving in trust. When we hear the gospel of the widow's might right, the wealthy people, they're giving large sums of money, and a poor widow, she gives two small coins. And Jesus notices this. Use it as a teaching moment with his apostles, and he says to her, her he says to the apostles, her gift was greater than those people giving vast amounts. And why? Because true generosity, it's measured by the heart, not by the size of the gift. She gave from her need, right? The wealthy people gave from their abundance their excess. Then there's the story of the rich young man, right? What does the Lord tell him to do? Go sell what you have and give it to the poor, give all of it to the poor. And he couldn't do it, right? Scripture says He went away sad. Why? Because he was attached. He wasn't detached. He couldn't give what he treasured the most. And that is a key question for us. Are we giving what's easy? Are we giving away what we won't miss, or are we giving in trust, just like we talked about fasting. If you're fasting from something and you know you don't miss it, maybe you were fasting from the wrong thing. Say Same thing here. If we give something up and we don't miss it, maybe we gave the wrong thing up, right? It applies to fasting. It applies to almsgiving too. So quick story from I've shared this before, but I think it's very relevant to this topic. So back in 2012 the school our kids attended was struggling financially. It struggled financially over the years, but this was one particular moment, enrollment was low, donations had slowed, and they called a meeting with all the families. Treasurer stood up and said that unless they could raise it was, I think it was, $250,000 the school would close. And there was about 100 125 families. And so the Ask was if each family could give $2,000 and I remember going home from that meeting, sitting down with Taryn. We were broke. We were we hadn't quite figured out the money stuff and how to get organized and have shared goals and work together. We had car loans, credit card debt, medical debt, student loans, home equity debt. We weren't budgeting, we weren't managing our money for the Lord, right? We were paycheck to paycheck, and we went home with this request to try to come up with two grand, and it was important to us, and we scraped together maybe six or 800 bucks. Now we weren't tithing. We weren't really being generous at this time, because we were a train wreck, and I remember just feeling sick to my stomach wishing we could have done more. A week later, we found out the school had raised the money, so I knew we had we had done less, like less than what they had asked. I knew someone else must have done more. I knew others helped close the gap. And I remember thinking at some point in my life, I want to be that person. I want to be the type of person who can step in and help. And that moment was a key moment for us, that because that's when something changed and really increased our drive to figure out this money stuff, and it was because we had we were trapped, right? We had no margin, we had no control. Our cup was too big, and Psalm 23 I mean, I love so many songs. Talking to someone this morning, I said mentioned a psalm. They're like, Oh yeah, that's a great Psalm. They're all great Psalms, right? Psalm 23 says, The Lord is my shepherd. There's nothing I shall want, right? You know how it goes. And there's the line there. My cup overflows. And this line in particular, it sticks with me a lot. Particularly talk about financial things, my cup overflows, but the overflow right in order for something to overflow, it really depends on the size of the cup. If your cup is the size of a swimming pool, it may never overflow. You could pour blessing after blessing after blessing into it, and it just fills the space. But if your cup is small, even modest income can overflow it. And here's the key, and this is something I didn't realize, because I was always chasing a larger income. When I have more money, I'll be generous, right? You don't create overflow by earning more, you create overflow by needing less by shrinking that cup, right? While the world says, make more, upgrade, expand, increase your lifestyle. But what happens the cup keeps growing, bigger. House, nicer. Car, more subscriptions, more expectations, more normal. You. Right, everything goes levels up, but then there's no overflow. Everything is is taken. Everything spoke, every dollar is spoken for everything took it to, you know, took a place, and then when the Lord nudges you right, like he did it for us at that meeting, like, hey, I need you to help here. I've called you here to send your kids to the school. They need some money, you know, two grand. Can you do it? And when the Lord nudges you like that, there's nothing left. And it's not because he hadn't blessed us, right? It's not because he hasn't blessed you. It's because our cups got too big. Taryn and I, we didn't become generous by making more, right? We became generous because the Lord gave us the grace to identify our problem, which was the size of our cup, and shrink it by living below our means. And I will tell you we were not out of control, right? We had a house that was very modest, one bathroom, four bedrooms. We had two crummy little cars, older minivan, Chevy Malibu. These were not fancy cars. They had car payments on them. Our medical debt was a baby's delivery, some probably dental work and car repairs. That was our credit card debt, right? We weren't, like, it wasn't trips to, you know, the Amalfi Coast and cruises and gambling debt and, like, we weren't like, out of control, just the cup was just too big, and shrinking the cup, it isn't deprivation, it's preparation. Right? By saying no to some wants makes it possible that when the Lord says, Move, you can move. Right? It's creating space to respond to the Lord. Margin makes that obedience to the Lord possible. You know, this is going back a few years, but it's, this was a great story for Tara and I just a great moment of complete trust in the Lord. I had just met with a friend. I'm driving out of a pan air, and Taryn calls me Terrence, my wife, and she says, hey, you know, there was a family we knew that was going through something. And she says, Hey, I've been thinking and praying for this family. And I I told her, yeah, me too. She said, I think we need to write them a check. And immediately, when she said that, a number popped into my head. So I asked her, I said, What? What are you thinking? And she said she didn't want to say the number first, because she wanted me to pray about and I told her, Look, I've been praying for these people. As you said, this a number popped in my head. Can you say the number? And she said the exact number that was in my head. And that immediately confirmed with me that the Lord put the number there, but then my flesh kicked in. Wait a minute. I said, if we do this, they're going to think we're weird, like we don't have money like this, just to throw it around, right? Why? Because we're place. We're saving to replace some cars. We're trying to pay off our house. We were, you know, we're a little behind in retirement because we our finances had been a mess for so long, that number was going to put a little hiccup in our plan, at least the math I was doing in my head. But here's something I've learned when I hear a word from the Lord, he's never let us down. He is faithful. He has such a good track record. So we wrote the check, we left it at their house, and then we heard nothing. I would look at the bank account wondering, like, did they cash it? Do we overstep? Do they think we're crazy? Like, like, who are we that we think we can help solve someone's problem? Two weeks later, the check cleared. The next Sunday, at Mass, there are a few rows behind us. They didn't normally go to our church, but they were there that day after mass. They hugged us, and they said to us that that exact amount was an expense that they had just incurred. There is nothing that confirms listening to the Lord and obeying like that. And here's the wild part, right? A few months later, what happened? We paid off our mortgage. But wait, the math didn't work, right? The math wasn't supposed to work on this. If we gave that check, how do we still pay the mortgage off? Well, because the Lord finds a way to do whatever he wants done, and that is so true, the Lord finds a way to do whatever he wants done, and if you cooperate with him, you get to participate in that plan. That's fun. That's the adventure of following the Lord do. That's the crazy adventure of following the Lord. The Lord finds a way to do whatever he wants done, and if you're listening and you OBEY Him, you get to cooperate with him and participate in that plan. You're not collateral damage. You're part of the plan. So generosity is our response to the Lord's faithfulness. It's how we express gratitude when you realize that everything is a gift, your income, your gifts, your talents, your health, your opportunities, giving becomes Thanksgiving. We are managers. We are not the owners. God is the owner. Everything belongs to God. The only thing we truly own is our decisions, our actions and the consequences of them, right? But when the owner nudges the manager, the manager moves for where your treasure is there. Also will your heart be. When you give to something, your heart moves there. You pray for it, you care about it, you love it. God doesn't need your money. He wants your heart. And one of the fastest ways to move your heart towards heaven is to move your treasure towards heaven. One of last week's gospels, the reading, the Gospel reading gives us another powerful reminder. It's the story of the rich man and the beggar. Lazarus. The rich man lived in luxury. Scripture says He was dressed in fine linen and feasted sumptuously every day. Right he had a good life comfort, and right outside his gate was Lazarus. Lazarus is poor. He's covered with sores. He's longing just to eat the scraps that fell from the rich man's table. The rich man didn't hurt Lazarus. He didn't attack him. He didn't mistreat him. He simply ignored him. The rich man lived his life. He enjoyed his comfort, and Lazarus just sat at the gate. The story Jesus tells makes something very clear to us. The problem wasn't just that the rich man had wealth. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that he did nothing with it for the person right in front of him. He had a Lazarus at his gate, and he walked past him. Alms giving is our opportunity to not walk past the Lazarus in our lives. Sometimes, sometimes that means giving financially right, writing a check sometimes it means helping someone who is struggling. This goes back a few months ago. We're at the grocery store in New Jersey legal. You can't have plastic shopping bags, so you have to have cloth bags. And you walk into a store, it's so hard, you got to remember to bring your shopping bag with you, otherwise you look like an idiot trying to carry all your stuff out to the car, or everything just flies around your car as you drive home. So you got to bring cloth, a reusable shopping bag. And we're in the store, and we brought our reusable shopping bags, and the guy in front of me did not and he's got all the stuff, and I see him staring at it. He doesn't want to buy reusable shopping, so we just gave him a couple my daughter looks at me and says, do we know him? I said, No, but it looks like he could use a bag, right? Sometimes it's just helping someone who's struggling seeing that Lazarus in front of you. Sometimes it means stepping into someone's situation when the Lord nudges you, because Lazarus isn't only financially poor. Sometimes Lazarus is spiritually poor. Sometimes Lazarus is emotionally poor. Sometimes Lazarus is the person in your life who is hurting, discouraged, lonely, overwhelmed, or searching for meaning. And alms. Giving isn't just sharing money. It's sharing the good that we have received. It's sharing encouragement, it's sharing our time. It's sharing the love of the Father with someone who desperately needs to experience it. Jesus makes this connection very clear when he says, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me, that's an incredible thought. When we help someone in need, we are serving Christ Himself. When we give to someone who's struggling, we're giving to Christ when we lift up someone who's poor in spirit, poor in hope, poor in resources, poor in encouragement. We are loving Christ, so part of almsgiving during Lent is asking the Lord to open our eyes, Lord Who are the Lazarus in my life, who is sitting at the gate that I've been walking past, who needs encouragement, who needs generosity. Who needs the love of the Father shown to them through me? Because Lazarus is not across the world. Sometimes Lazarus is across the street, sometimes Lazarus is in our parish, sometimes Lazarus is in our workplace. Sometimes, I'd say many times, Lazarus is in our own family. So as we practice ALMS giving this Lent, let's not just be thinking about writing a check, like let's do that, but let's also ask the Lord to help us see to see the Lazarus at the gate. Help us see the needs around us, to see the opportunities to love. Because when we love the least among us, Jesus says we are loving Him, and that's what ALMS giving is all about. So I'll leave you with this. Are we giving what's easy? Are we giving what we won't miss? Are we only just giving from abundance, or are we giving in trust? Prayer aligns the heart. Fasting strengthens the will. Alms giving expands the heart. Shrinking our cup creates margin. Margin creates opportunity for obedience, and obedience creates joy. And one day, when we stand before the Lord, we want to hear we want to hear him say, Well done, good and faithful servant. So let's, let's practice that now. Let's practice all of this, prayer, fasting, almsgiving. Let's practice all of that this Lent. I hope this has been helpful. Thank you for joining me today. May God bless you. Thank you for listening to Catholic money talk. I hope you join us again next time, please click Subscribe in your podcast app to get notified of new episodes. God bless you and have a great day. You.