GIVE GRATUITOUSLY

FRIENDS and SERVANTS of the WORD

Monday 6 November 2023 – Week 31 Ordinary Time

WORD of the DAY 

On a sabbath Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees.
He said to the host who invited him, “When you hold a lunch or a dinner,
do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment.
Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.
For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”    (Luke 14: 12-14)

How shall I live this Word?     

In these few verses Jesus offers us two fundamental components of our living charity: gratuitousness and universality. The evangelical love that is expressed in service is a totally free gift that expects nothing, does not seek or hope for reciprocation or gain. True love is given by the abundance of the heart; it is not motivated by a void to be filled or governed by the “do ut des” law. In our daily lives, we risk always remaining within an interested love and a conception of life as merchants. Today I invite you and tomorrow you invite me and we always remain in a closed environment between people on equal terms who mutually exchange their favors.

And the “poor, crippled, lame, blind”, the marginalized, the excluded, the immigrants, where are they? The words of Jesus undermine this selfish and closed way of conceiving life and ask us for complete openness capable of establishing a new fraternity, based on two distinctive characteristics: gratuitousness and universality. Gratuitousness and universality are the surest indication that we are on the right path that brings us closer to God. After all, Christ loved us with a free, universal love. He himself offered a banquet for us, although knowing that we are often unable to reciprocate it. Why? Because at heart we are poor, crippled, lame, blind, every day. Yet, every Sunday He invites us to the table of His Body and His blood!! By virtue of this gift completely empty of interests, we too can love like Him.

In my meditative pause I reflect on the motivations that govern my actions, my service to others. For whom do I do it? Why do I do it? Who do I do it with?

The voice of Pope Francis – 7 December 2013

Unfortunately, in our era, very rich in so many achievements and hopes, there is no shortage of powers and forces that end up producing a throwaway culture; and this tends to become a common mentality. The victims of this culture are precisely the weakest and most fragile human beings, who risk being ‘discarded’, expelled from a mechanism that must be efficient at all costs. This false model of humanity and society implements a practical atheism, effectively denying the Word of God which says, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness” (cf. Gen 1:26). Only if we allow ourselves to be questioned by this word, can things change.”

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