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Gospel Commentary for Thursday, October 30, 2025
Don’t Lose Heart
When we look at the world—and sometimes even at our own lives—it’s almost impossible not to feel discouraged. How far can corruption go? How far can violence reach? When will a situation that seems unbearable finally come to an end? And yet, Paul insists today: “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
Well, according to the newspapers and everything we see around us, the answer seems pretty clear: a lot of people! Persecutions and even real genocides of Christians in Africa, more or less hidden attacks on faith in our own society—who can be against us? It feels like almost everyone! But Paul continues: neither persecution, nor the sword, nor hunger, nor war—nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Reading chapter 8 of the Letter to the Romans slowly, line by line, becomes like a steady rhythm of hope that beats against the constant drum of bad news.
When facing challenges that seem impossible to overcome, the disciples (like so many of us) suggest running away. To flee or hide (to bury our heads under the wing) might seem easier in the short term, but it only leads to fear that borders on panic, to snowballs of lies, to denial of what’s obvious, to terror.
The disciples’ words—“Go away, because Herod wants to kill you”—sound almost like an echo of Joseph’s dream in the infancy stories and the flight into Egypt. At the beginning of the Gospel, the goal was to protect the mission of the Son. Now, it is to fulfill it. Jesus doesn’t run away because He knows who He is: the Christ, the Anointed One, the Blessed who comes in the name of the Lord. He keeps walking toward Jerusalem because He knows that nothing can separate Him from the love of God, which is His very being—for the Father and He are one.
In the same way, we, His disciples, can be sure that nothing and no one can separate us from that love, no matter how hard it may be to believe it. The option of running away isn’t really possible for us, because it would only lead us into other, even more painful forms of slavery. The only real option is to believe.
So, who—truly—can be against us?