Aspects of Virtue, Material Issues, Principles of Spirituality in the Family (2)

2021-06-24

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Contents

How to Increase One’s Daily Bread Unlawful Property One Who Repents is Loved by God A Surprising Example of Sincerity Piety and Justice

How to Increase One’s Daily Bread

There are some ways in the Holy Quran and the Prophetic traditions to increase one’s daily bread, which will also improve people’s morality and affection in the family and the society.

The Commander of the Faithful (Pbuh) said: Good temper is the treasure of daily bread.(1)

To be too strict spoils your temper, and to go easy on others increases your daily bread.(2) Co-operation and helping your Muslim brothers increases your daily bread.(3)

Being trustworthy increases one’s daily bread.(4) Imam Sadiq (Pbuh) said: One who treats his wife and children kindly will get an increase in his daily bread.(5)

Good deeds increase one’s daily bread.(6) Good temper increase one’s daily bread.(7) Imam Ali (Pbuh) said: Attract your daily bread to yourself through charity to others.(8)

Imam Baqir (Pbuh) said: Pray for your brothers and this act will bring in your daily bread.(9) The Fifth Imam (Pbuh) said: Giving alms will increase your daily bread.(10)

The Commander of the Faithful (Pbuh) said: The daily bread of one with good intentions will be increased.(11)

Unlawful Property

The Prophet (Pbuh ) said: God said, If one does not care how and where he gets his money from, I do not care by which gate I will let him enter into Hell in the Hereafter.

(12) God will make the one who earns unlawful money poor. Whatever one earns unlawfully becomes provisions for the Hell Fire.

Wealth from which religious dues are not paid is considered to be property containing unlawful property.

Its use is not allowable and giving it to the family or others is another wrong act. The Commander of the Faithful (Pbuh) said:

The worst property is that from which God’s dues have not been paid.(13)

Imam Baqir (Pbuh) said: There are people who shall leave their graves with their hands tied to their necks, lacking any power to get anything – even as much as an ant can.

They are seriously blamed by the angels saying: These are people upon whom God bestowed wealth but they did not pay God’s dues.(14)

Imam Hassan Mujtaba (Pbuh) said: One of the signs of generosity is to legally earn your property.(15)

O’ dear brothers who are responsible for the financial expenses of your family and their spiritual training, and also you who shall marry later: your wife and children only deserve their rightful dues.

However, they are not responsible for your job or business, and will not accept the responsibility for unlawful property which you brought home and they knew nothing about.

The punishment in Hell for unlawful property is for the one who earns it. There are two punishments: one for earning unlawful property and the other is for giving it to others.

Then be content with lawful property given by God, and be careful about how you earn your income.

Avoid obtaining unlawful property and pay the lawful dues, so that you can prosper in this world and in the Hereafter.

One Who Repents is Loved by God

During a visit to Mashhad, I met a man one night at the time of the call to prayers. It seemed he had known me for many years.

He asked me to accompany him to his residence, so after a few minutes of talking I accepted his invitation even though that was the first time I had met him.

Then I found out that he was one of the people who had attended my lectures during the morning ceremonies in the months of Muharram and Saffar.

He knew me but I did not know him. I asked who he was from one who had accompanied him when he left us for a few minutes. I recognized him when the man told me his name.

When he was younger, he was a man who was strong and brutish, so much so that the strongest men of Tehran were afraid of him.

His activities included taking bribes from the casinos and banks, smuggling and distributing wine.

No one in Tehran could confront him. He had earned a lot of wealth unlawfully. God guided him and his conscience bothered him.

His pure nature and his intellect brought him down from his previous position. He then converted all his property into cash and put it all in a suitcase.

Immediately he went to Qum to meet the Grand Ayatullah Boroojerdy. The noble Shiite authority kindly accepted him when he was informed about that mans past.

The man told the Ayatullah that what was in the suitcase was all absolutely unlawfully earned.

He said he could not bear the reckoning on the Day of Judgment and asked the Ayatullah to relieve him of this heavy burden.

The Ayatullah told him that if he really wanted to repent he should take off his outer garments and return to Tehran wearing just his pajamas. The man took off his clothes, and the Shiite authority was really impressed.

Boroojerdy found his repentance to be a serious one, returned his clothes, paid him five thousand Tomans from his personal property, and gave him the good news of a brilliant future.

The repenter returned to Tehran with that lawfully earned money. He quit all his past deeds and started to work with his new capital.

He settled down, really changed, and guided his wife and children towards the Right Path. He then founded one of the most fruitful religious meetings in Tehran.

At the end of his life in 1992 A.D. he talked to Imam Husayn (Pbuh) while he was crying one Friday night a few minutes before he died.

He said: I spent most of my life in your service, and now I hope I can gain your favor.

His wife and children said that suddenly he stared at the corner of the room, respectfully greeted Imam Husayn (Pbuh) and passed away with a smile on his face.

Thus everyone can repent. Repentance will purify one’s soul, illuminate one’s heart, improve one’s temper, cleanse one’s wealth and all aspects of life of impurity.

Why not benefit by repenting and spend the rest of your life moving from darkness into light? Let’s repent since God loves those who repent and it is not worth the whole world to stay sinful.

For God loves those who turn to him constantly.(16) The Prophet (Pbuh ) said: There is nothing dearer to God than a believing man or woman who repents.(17)

I swear to God, God is more pleased with one who repents than a man who is pleased when he gets his food.(18)

God is more pleased with the repentance of his servants, than an infertile man who becomes a father, or one who has lost something and finds it, and one whose thirst is quenched by water.(19)

One who repents is just like one who has never committed any sin.(20) Repenting will purify the soul and wash away the sins.(21)

Repentance actually has consequences which the Prophet of Islam (Pbuh ) has pointed out. One can be sure of the acceptance of his repentance if these consequences are manifested.

If not one must repent again. If the consequences of repentance do not show up, then the repentance is not accepted.

The consequences of repentance include gaining the satisfaction of those involved; performing undone prayers; humbleness with people; protecting the soul against lust; and losing weight through fasting.(22)

The Commander of the Faithful (Pbuh) said: Repentance holds the uppermost place in Heaven, and consists of six parts:

1- Regretting the past.
2- Determination to stop sinning in the future.
3- Returning people’s rights to them.
4- Performing undone duties.
5- Losing all the weight gained during the period of sinning.
6- Exposing the body to the trouble of worship, and asking for God’s forgiveness (23)

A Surprising Example of Sincerity

For many years I had been a friend of one of the sincere men of the cloth in love with the Prophet Muhammad (Pbuh) and his Household.

His morality and behavior had taught me some good lessons. He told me that when he had left Tehran for Qum so as to become educated in theology, Ayatullah Al’Uzma Hajj Sheik Abdulkarim Haeri”.

Abdulkarim was the head of the Qum Seminary. After some time, I was introduced to the Ayatullah as having an especial zeal for and way of reciting the tragedies of the Household of the Prophet Mohammed (Pbuh).

I was requested to recite those tragedies for him at specified times.

Gradually, I became renown for this type of recital and I was honored to be in the line of the professional reciters of the elegies for Imam Husayn (Pbuh).

One Thursday night I was taken to the home of one of the great clergymen who lived in the poorer parts of town and was asked to make a speech where I spoke for a few minutes about death referring to some lines from the book Nahj ul-Balaghah (The Peak of Eloquence).

The house owner sobbed too much and even continued doing so until the end of the meeting.

I was invited to go again next Thursday night and was instructed to speak about a lighter and more down to earth subject.

Whenever the distinguished house owner remembered the sermon subject from the week before, he sobbed his heart out.

Then I was told a surprising story about that man’s sincerity. He was single, but our insistence upon his marrying was to no avail.

After a while he accepted to get married, so a young, unmarried woman was suggested to him to be his suitable match.

According to the principles of Islamic law he saw her one time, but he rejected the marriage.

Later on I heard that the man had married a dark-complexioned, ugly widow having three offspring. I was really surprised to hear the news, so I asked him why he had done so.

He replied that he had seen the first lady who was a virgin and accepted to marry her, but as much as he tried to do so out of sincere intentions and for the sake of Allah he found it to be impossible.

So he decided to forsake the marriage. Then he said he saw the second woman whose husband had died and therefore had no one to bring in the daily bread.

She was left with three orphans so no one was ready to marry her. He noted that he had found the field of sincerity of intentions and married for the sake of Allah.

He also mentioned that the real benefits of this good deal would be bestowed upon him on the Day of Judgment. The Commander of the Faithful Ali (Pbuh) stated:

Blessed is the one whose actions, knowledge, kindness, revenge, taking and not taking things, speaking and not speaking all stem from his sincerity for Allah. (24)

He also said: Sincerity is the most honorable ending.(25) Hazrat Ali (Pbuh) said: Freedom is found in sincerity.(26) And he said: Sincerity is the support for the worship of Allah.(27)

The Prophet (Pbuh) said: Blessed are the sincere ones. They are the lights on the path of guidance and are free from any wickedness.(28)

Imam Hassan Askari (Pbuh) said the following about the very impressive value of the sincere ones:

If I reduced the whole world into a bite of food and fed it to the one who worships God out of sincerity, then I would still think I had not done right by him.(29)

The Prophet (Pbuh) stated: Do all your actions out of sincerity for God. God will not accept those actions except the ones done out of sincerity for Him.(30)

Imam Ali (Pbuh) said: The one whose goal is other than God has been ruined.(31) The Prophet (Pbuh) stated: Sincerity means to avoid all divinely forbidden things and actions.(32)

The flower of sincerity in each action would blossom from the garden of the spirit and its scent would fill all spheres of life, if passion, lust, the instincts, keeping up with the Joneses, attachment to material affairs over and above the lawful limits and forgetfulness in one’s affairs did not rule over us.

O’ how pleasant is the life of a man and his wife who have based their marriage on sincerity and during the course of life continue to be sincere even in the face of limitations.

Say: Truly, my prayer and my service of sacrifice, my life and my death, are (all) for God, the Cherisher of the Worlds:(33)

Hypocrisy and showing off in the performance of the obligatory acts would void them and hypocrisy and showing off in the lawful acts would reduce their value.

Piety and Justice

A woman and her husband must observe the divine matters and Islamic decrees when interacting with each other.

Enacting these truths in life is impossible unless one puts piety and justice to work in his life.

Piety means avoiding evil deeds, bad-temperedness and unacceptable behavior. Justice means to avoid going to extremes in one’s daily affairs.

Oppression of a woman by a man and vice versa to whatever degree it may be is shameful, even though some may not think it is important.

A woman does not have great physical strength and at times is not in good spirits.

In his encounters with his wife a man must consider the various aspects of her creation, just as God has taken into consideration a woman’s abilities and powers and exempted her from carrying out some duties.

Woman’s weaknesses must be compensated for by the graceful encounters of the man with her.

The Prophet (Pbuh) said: Whoever gets married for the sake of God and observe the relations of the womb, then God will crown him with the angels’ crown.

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