WORD 2day: Thursday, 14th week in Ordinary time
July 9, 2020: Hosea 11: 1-4,8-9; Matthew 10: 7-15
We are loved, loved by God, loved extremely and unconditionally. Like a child, without having to pay back we have been loved by God. Hosea who has been speaking to us for the past few days, brings out the compassion and love of God towards God's children in various terms, always contrasting it with our own infidelity and fickle mindedness. Today he brings out the love that God has for us in terms of a love that a father or a mother has towards a little, helpless child.
In the Gospel Jesus gives a practical demonstration of what happens when we really understand and experience this love of God, so free, so unlimited and incredibly unconditional. When we receive the love from the Lord, we cannot hold it within us - because of two reasons: we receive it undeservedly and we receive it in such immense measures! That is why he sends his disciples far and wide, and asks us today, to go and to take the loving message of God to every nook and corner of the earth.
Experiencing God's love makes me by nature loving. The more I experience God's love truly, the more loving I become. The corollary is revealing: the less loving I am, the less have I really experienced the love of God. Hence all those hypocrites who spread hatred in the name of God, are despicable beings that have really not experienced the true love of God. Isn't that a challenging perspective to think about?
If we really experience the love of God, drink deep from it, we cannot but give it because our cup overflows! We give because we are filed with it. We give because we are given. We love because we are loved!