Friday, May 3, 2013

Luke 6:38


“Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be put into your lap.” (Lk 6:38).


"Seeing the multitudes, Jesus was moved with pity" (Mt 9:36); this expresses all the love of Jesus for men groping in the dark. Love that He received from the Father: “But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rm 5:8).

And in calling and sending his apostles, Jesus makes them share the same passionate and free love for men: "Freely you have received, freely give” (Mt 10:8).

Evangelical love has as its primary characteristic gratuity, to take the initiative, to not wait for the other to take the first step, to not let ourselves to be polluted by calculations and interest.

Gratuity is also the condition for proclaiming the Gospel effectively.

If the gratuity is the first quality of love, poverty is its robe and the riverbed where it can flow. Gratuity and poverty were married on the Cross, the greatest manifestation of Jesus and of his Gospel. The Church is called to tread the same path.

Teresa of Calcutta declared that in her extreme poverty there was never lacking a bed and a crib to accommodate the poorest people. While, when gratuity and poverty diminish, one experiences sterility. Chiara Lubich wrote: "If a group of men were true servants of Christ in ones neighbor, soon the world would be of Christ." Gratuitous love is efficacious and has a force of irresistible attraction, because it reveals the omnipotence of God.

God never lets himself be outdone in generosity!

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An Experience of Life:

One evening my husband came home with the news that we would receive a sum of money as an inheritance from our relative. While celebrating the unexpected small fortune, one of us said, "We can not keep it just for ourselves, it would be nice to share it with someone in need."

The next night we learned that a family which came to Italy from Rwanda needed help. So we immediately found to whom to donate half of the sum received. Our gesture then provoked in other families the desire to do something. Soon we organized together a raffle with the proceeds of which were donated for the same purpose.

F.G., Italy