Benefits Repaid with Ingratitude

What should be thought of persons whose beneficence has been repaid with ingratitude and who therefore no longer practice the good out of fear of meeting more ungrateful  people?

These persons are much more selfish than charitable, since practicing the good only to receive signs of recognition is not to practice it disinterestedly, and disinterested  beneficence is the only kind that is agreeable to God. The same applies to their pride, since they derive pleasure in the humility of the recipients who place their recognition at their feet. Those who seek recompense on the earth for the good they do will not receive recompense in heaven. However, God will take into account those who do not seek recompense on the earth.

You must always help the weak, even though you know beforehand that the recipients of the good you do will not be grateful. You can be certain that if those to whom you render a service  forget about the benefit, God will take it more into account than if you had been recompensed by their gratitude. God sometimes allows you to be repaid with ingratitude in order to test your perseverance in practicing the good.

And moreover, how do you know if the momentarily forgotten act of beneficence might not produce good fruit later on? On the contrary, you can be certain that it is a seed that will germinate in time. Unfortunately, you always see only the present; you work for yourselves, and not with others in mind. Most assuredly, acts of beneficence end up softening the hardest hearts. They may be unappreciated in this world, but once the recipient’s spirit is rid of its corporeal envelope, it will remember, and that remembrance will be its punishment. Then, it will regret its ingratitude and will want to repair its wrong and pay its debt in another existence, often accepting a life of dedication toward its benefactor. Thus, without suspecting it,  you will have contributed to  that  spirit’s  moral advancement, and you will recognize later the truth of the maxim, “A benefit is never lost.” Moreover, you will have worked for yourselves, because you will have the merit of having done the good disinterestedly and without being discouraged by disillusionment.

Ah! My friends, if you knew all the ties that in your present life bind you to previous ones; if you could grasp the multitude of relationships that connect people to one another for their mutual progress, you would admire even more the wisdom and goodness of the Creator, who allows you to live again and again to reach him in the end.

A Protector Guide (Sens, 1862)