Wednesday in the 31st Week of Ordinary Time, November 5, 2025

Romans 13, 8-10

Brothers and sisters: Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, You shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not covet, and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this saying, namely, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.

“Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another.” In one brief sentence, St. Paul turns the entire moral life inside out. For him, Christianity is not about balancing accounts with God or neighbor. The believer is not a debtor paying installments of righteousness; rather, he is a heart set free — yet bound forever by the only debt that grows as it is paid: the debt of love.

Every other obligation fades beside this one. Property, reputation, honor — all these may rightfully be owed or discharged. But love can never be “settled,” because it is not a transaction. The more we love, the more we owe, for love does not empty itself in giving. It multiplies its own coinage, drawing us deeper into the divine treasury where love itself is the currency.

Paul’s argument is profoundly Jewish and profoundly Christian. He quotes the commandments, yet interprets them through the light of the Gospel. The prohibitions — you shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet — all define love negatively: love will not wound, destroy, or take. But the Christian law of love goes further. It does not merely restrain the hand; it transforms the heart. It is not content with avoiding sin — it overflows in doing good.

The moral law, when seen only as a list of boundaries, reveals how prone we are to harm one another. Love, when poured into the heart by the Holy Spirit, fulfills that same law not by erasing it, but by surpassing it. For the law was always meant to teach us how to love — and now the love of Christ accomplishes from within what commands could only demand from without.

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Paul reminds us that true charity does not destroy the self but rightly orders it. To love another as oneself presumes a healed self-love — a recognition that one’s own life is a gift of God’s mercy. The Christian does not despise himself, nor does he idolize himself; he sees himself as one whom God has loved first. From that realization flows the ability to love others without rivalry or fear.

Love “does no evil to the neighbor,” not because it calculates moral advantage, but because it cannot bear to harm what God cherishes. The one who abides in this love becomes transparent to divine charity: his actions are no longer driven by law but by likeness to Christ.

In Christ, the commandments take flesh. He is the living fulfillment of the law because in Him love and justice kiss. On the Cross, He owed us nothing — yet gave all. To follow him, then, is not merely to imitate his compassion but to participate in it: to let his love move through our words, our patience, our hidden sacrifices.

When Paul says that “love is the fulfillment of the law,” he is not abolishing the moral order; he is showing that the end toward which all commandments point has arrived. The law once carved on stone now burns in living hearts. The Christian who loves thus walks not under a code but within a communion.

To owe nothing but love is to be forever indebted to grace — and forever free.