Almsgiving Turned Tolerance of Mendicancy

A semester ago in our religious education class, we were tasked by our professor to bring an empty Coke bottle with a coin slot bored through its neck. This was to be part of a university-wide campaign of a one peso per day habit which will then accumulate by the end of semester and to be given to a selected beneficiary - from my point of view, a failed attempt to almsgiving as my one-peso filled Coke bottle is still sitting under my study desk, just waiting to be given away.

About a week ago, I accidentally kicked on it while trying to draft my assigned topic on our Seminar II class which will be passed in a few weeks. I paused from writing and thought about Ash Wednesday's homily. The priest was lecturing about the word 'ASH' in mnemonics and how to live with it for the next 40 days of penitence. A was for Almsgiving, S for Sacrifice and H for Holiness. Seeing the Coke bottle reminded me of Almsgiving and so I decided to have it given to an elementary or high school student who'd need it more, even if it's just a meager help, for their education.

Thinking about Almsgiving also reminds me of my social responsibility. Being in a university deep in the heart of the city, beggars are not strange to me. And since Ash Wednesday began, I have noticed their growing number in the overpass I frequently use. Sometimes I become guilty why I don't give them alms, the priest's homily from Ash Wednesday consistently nagging on my conscience but I just choose to turn a blind eye and move along the road.

How I had been this unmoving to their cries was because of the painful truth that these beggars may not be in real need, how they may be part of a greater network business of human trafficking (though I am not saying this to all beggars I see on the street, it's just that it's a reality everyone should stop ignoring).

Another reason is these are the same beggars I've been seeing since I enrolled at my current university, and that was four years ago. And that I've heard stories (probably just hearsays or they may be accurate) that the government have tried to relocate them into homes in the provinces, but they keep on refusing the help and keep on coming back to scavenge for food and beg for scraps.

I understand their situation, I just cannot connect this to me and almsgiving. Of how I should break my belief that tolerating their current act of begging is not helpful rather it is blatant feeding their dependence on us.

In the profession I am in, we are taught that our general goal is for our patience to achieve independence. And I am applying this to life which greatly contradicts my moral beliefs.