Gospel Reflection for Monday, February 10, 2025

I have had the opportunity many times to assist people at Caritas. Those who come to Caritas are in need, seeking help. They can’t afford rent or electricity bills, they don’t have enough for food, medicine, or for their children to be properly dressed for school. The needs are many, and the resources are few. For many people—sometimes entire families—making it to the end of the month is a struggle that repeats itself every single month. It’s as if they are running an endless obstacle course, never reaching the finish line.

That’s why, as soon as they see a helping hand, someone who can assist them, they go to it—because their needs are urgent. And if conditions are placed on them, they will agree to anything. And if, in the process of getting help, they feel they have to lie, they will lie. Because what is at stake is survival. I dare to say that the poor have the right to lie in order to receive help.

Jesus, through His preaching, His closeness to the poor and needy, and His healings, had a similar effect. The poor and the sick in those towns saw in Him a source of hope, a chance to move forward, to be freed from their pain, to find relief from the near-constant hunger that so many people lived with in those times (and also in ours—though from our privileged environments, we might find that hard to believe).

As always, the purists will say that these people did not come to Jesus with the best intentions, that they were simply looking to satisfy their own needs—to be free from the gnawing pain of hunger or the suffering of their illness. And that’s true. But that’s how the poor are. They have the right to seek relief precisely because of their poverty. Jesus understood this perfectly, which is why He was always so close to them—without demanding that they recite the Creed, or prove their doctrinal purity, or even demonstrate perfect moral integrity.

And we should do the same if we truly want to follow Jesus.