Mt 10.7-15 – Thursday of the XIV Week of Ordinary Time
“Freely you have received, freely give.” This phrase from today’s Gospel contains something essential about the Christian experience. The Gospel is free. Salvation is free. God’s love is free. We did nothing to deserve it, we have not won the mercy of Christ through our performance. We were simply reached out and loved.
All Christian life should be born from the memory of this gratuitousness. Those who forget that they have been loved freely inevitably begin to transform faith into a merit, into a power, into a tool to feel better than others. However, those who preserve the memory of the grace received feel the desire to love with the same gratuitousness arise within themselves. But loving freely also means accepting the risk of ingratitude. Many times we do good things expecting, perhaps unconsciously, recognition, a response, gratitude. And when all this doesn’t arrive, we get discouraged and stop loving.
The Gospel, however, teaches us that gratuitousness is doing good not because others deserve it, but because we were the first to receive a good that we did not deserve. Then there is another temptation that Jesus wants to warn us against: using the Gospel to affirm ourselves. You can preach Christ and seek your own success. One can serve the Church and desire a position. We can talk about humility and build pedestals to climb on. But all this is exactly the opposite of Jesus’ logic. Christ did not use the love of others to become important. He used his entire life to love others. He chose humility, service, meekness and last place. This is the authentic form of the Gospel.
Thursday 9 July 2026 – (Thursday of the XIV Week of Ordinary Time – Even Year)
