“Your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Mt 6:6).
The Lord says these words in connection with His recommendation to pray and give alms in secret.
Our Father is pleased when we do good in secret, without seeking to attract the attention of others. Certainly, there are works that must be done in public so that God may be praised and acknowledged (cf. Mt 5:16). However, the Lord is not referring to these, but to those works that are most fruitful when they are done in secret for God.
It is very beautiful to share certain secrets exclusively with the Father, secrets of love that only He and we know. These would lose their splendour if we were to make them known in order to reap our own glory and thus receive our reward. How many works that the world ignores and that God alone knows bear abundant fruit! It is said that after the death of St Therese of the Child Jesus, one of the nuns in the convent wondered what was so special about this nun. She was unaware of all the dialogue and intimacy that had unfolded in secret between the Lord and this young Carmelite.
How many of the Lord’s disciples must have made sacrifices in secret, with their eyes fixed on the Father, offering them, for example, for the conversion of others, without anyone knowing it!
Sometimes such things come to light, perhaps to awaken the zeal of others and to make them realize that every work done in secret for the love of God bears great fruit.
Let us praise the Lord publicly and do His works in such a way that people will recognise His goodness. But let us remain in secret with many things that only the Father knows.