The older I get the more I realize that some of the things my mother that did that made me the most craze were the ones that taught me the most. She would often get angry with us for not doing something around the house and say, “Do I have to tell you to do everything?” As a child, at least in my head, I would respond, “yes.” I thought that she had some unreasonable expectation that we could read her mind. It was only much later in life that I realized that she was teaching us the same message is today's gospel.
The gospel today ends with Jesus saying that when we have done everything we have been commanded to do, we are to call ourselves “useless servants.” The message here is not that human beings are bad, or that Christianity is somehow intended to wreck our self-esteem. The message of the gospel is the same as the central message of the entire Gospel that what should motivate our actions is always love. If we only do the things that we are supposed to do out of a sense of obligation, or worse yet a sense of fear, then we are not truly disciples of Christ. We are still acting as if we were slaves.
like my mother, Jesus wants us to do the right thing not because we're commanded to but because we want to out of love. Once more it seems, mom was right!
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