Thursday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
The gospel literally lived
As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons. Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give. Do not take gold or silver or copper for your belts; no sack for the journey, or a second tunic, or sandals, or walking stick. The laborer deserves his keep. Mt 10,7-10
The gospel of today is a continuation of the one of yesterday. It completes the mandate to evangelize, by adding two aspects closely related to the mission: the power to make
miracles and healings, and the abandonment to the Providence, because the worker of the Lord, like all the workers, is entitled to be compensated. These two aspects are still valid, or they must be considered to be limited only to those early disciples who have received the mandate directly from the Master? The immediate answer is as follows: if there was in the gospel even a single word decayed over the time, we would be allowed to question all of it . And, as my parents did when, being me a boy, they were giving me a glass of strong wine watered down a bit, the temptation not to get drunk too, exists. It would be a shame because it would lose much of its flavor and its power: the gospel, like the good wine, has to be drank as being pure. But back to our two subjects, let’s start from the miracles and from the healings. Apart from the symbolic meanings of the sicks, of the deads and of the the lepers, we sometimes wonder whether the mandate to make miracles, healings and exorcisms has to be taken straight as of today. The convincement which we have developed over the years is that, for the diseases and the situations of evil, we must pray; having done so, we can testify that we have seen many miracles of healing , but not always. We believe, however, that the difference of the results is not due to reasons of the faith, but to the fact that the Lord’s will sometimes goes through roads much different from ours. As regards, instead, the right reward promised to the workers of the gospel, we must recognize that our commitment to evangelization has not prevented us to educate and raise fourteen children, nor to own homes and cars suited to our needs; we have also received as donation great holidays in places normally reserved to wealthy people. I can honestly say that the page of the today’s gospel can be accepted and lived also literally, as it is. Under the condition to believe in it.