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A team of 200 priests comment on daily Gospel
Liturgical day: Monday 31st in Ordinary Time
Gospel text (Lk 14,12-14): On a sabbath, Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees. He addressed the man who had invited him and said, «When you give a lunch or a dinner, don't invite your friends (…). For surely they will also invite you in return and you will be repaid. When you give a feast, invite instead the poor (…). Fortunate are you then, because they can't repay you; you will be repaid at the Resurrection of the upright».
The "principle of gratuitousness” in economic activity
EDITORIAL TEAM
evangeli.net
(based on texts by Benedict XVI)
(Città del Vaticano, Vatican)
Today, it must be acknowledged that the economic growth is being weighed down by malfunctions and dramatic problems. The current crisis presents us with choices that cannot be postponed concerning nothing less than the destiny of man, who, moreover, cannot prescind from his nature.
The human being is made for gift. Both in the order of thinking and behavior, not only that traditional principles of social ethics like transparency, honesty, responsibility, cannot be ignored, but the "principle of gratuitousness” and the "logic of gift", as an expression of fraternity, can and must find their place within normal economic activity. This is a human demand at the present time, but it is also demanded by economic logic.
—In the global era, economic activity cannot prescind from gratuitousness, which fosters and disseminates solidarity and responsibility for justice and the common good. This is, ultimately, a deep and specific form of "economic democracy".