Charity in the sense that the Sermon on the Mount demands costs on a personal level, requires sacrifice, and often beckons us to reach out in love even to those we do not like. It beckons us as well to love our enemies, since they, too, have faces and names. Charity is always personal in the sense Dorothy Day insisted upon, and, therefore, when we give money to a “charity,” it is an act, though laudable and good, that can be without much cost (as we give from our largesse rather than our substance) and that is done with only a vague sense of who the money is helping.
