From birth, our life instinct, as mammals, compels us to seek a source of nourishment. A lack, an instinct, and later a learning process, leads us to move toward a source of energy, nourishment, recognition, pleasure, or material security, such as possessions or money.

When the goal is not food, but rather recognition or fulfilling ideals, we are willing to pay the price of effort to obtain it.

In kindergarten, we are taught to put the blue, green, or red sticker depending on whether we have done a task well or poorly. As adults, the stickers we seek are called euros. We are prepared to get what we want in exchange for something. Everything has a price. Or else, as a psychology professor said, everything responds to brain stimuli, substances, drives, including what we call love.

That is, if we know how to use our instincts and be skillful in transactions, we can get where we want to be.

But not everything is that simple, nor is everything that easy. First, dissatisfaction compels us to seek new incentives, since what we have achieved doesn’t satisfy us. And, above all, because the shortcomings that lead us to seek compensation, if we don’t accept them, we spend our lives seeking to compensate them. We are the short person who doesn’t accept his height and spends his life changing high heels, or the eternally poor person, who spends his life accumulating wealth so as not to be poor and dies with a fortune unspent.

Similarly, we accumulate intangible goods that envelop our identity. In some way, our ambitions, no matter how laudable, trap us.

The task that provides that benefit can range from performing jobs to obtain compensation, to those other violent and distress-creating attitudes in others, to provoke the response we desire. Complaints, crying, or victimhood are all in the service of being the center of attention, for example.

Gratuity is that economic concept that breaks with the pattern of consideration or reward. It purifies intentions, whether it’s to love or to perform a task for the sake of obtaining a benefit.

Therefore, the purer a relationship is, the freer it is from self-interest, the more it moves in gratuity, and the closer it is to pure love.

I remember a religious sister, with an exemplary life and generous dedication, already weak and seriously ill, lamenting in her hospital bed that she was useless, and that she couldn’t even concentrate on praying. She had been very active, had helped many people. She felt the need to give the Lord something, at least a prayer. I told him, “Up until now you’ve given a lot, but every thing you’ve done, even prayer, has been an offering. You’ve given something. Now you can’t give anything. The Lord loves you freely. You still have to give yourself without anything, that is, abandon yourself in his arms, without intermediaries, without needing to give. We recalled several psalms and that verse from Isaiah 19:15.” It was difficult for him to enter, since he had lived his whole life being useful and sacrificing himself; he didn’t understand pure love without offering anything in return.

Gratuity is also the path that leads to healing wounds. Trauma is the repeated experience of the pain caused by an event. That event is retained vividly in the memory, as if it happened yesterday. Perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of a desire for revenge, perhaps out of the need to remake the past by annihilating the aggressor. In trauma, we live in the past. It’s impossible to offer forgiveness to another. Something of ours has been stolen from us. The older we get, the more we accumulate grievances. We want compensation, but we lose our joy. A priest was abused during his formative years. This affected his journey, forcing him to leave the congregation. The call to the priesthood persisted. Had he continued to harbor resentment, it would have been impossible to respond. We can say that he followed the spirituality of Job, discovering the greatness of the Creator, despite human aggression. Now he exercises his ministry with a profound sensitivity to suffering.

Gratuity even makes illness beautiful. I have seen some cases of absolute romantic fidelity in marriages where one partner fell ill and was bedridden for years, while the other remained by his side until the end. A parishioner whose wife fell ill with Alzheimer’s cared for her at home until he could. But afterward, he accompanied her every day at the nursing home. They both went for walks. She in a wheelchair, expressionless, and he, engaging her in conversation, even in the rain. I thought he would be dependent on her and would struggle to move on after her death. But that wasn’t the case. They shared a love of free will, without needing any compensation—physical, recognizable, or financial.

Gratuity, in addition to purifying our intentions, becomes the springboard for happiness, since it pours everything into joy. This is priceless.

Mary is an example of gratuity. On May 8, the day Pope Leo XIV was elected, there are several Marian feasts. The Augustinians, like Pope Leo XIV, celebrate Our Lady of Grace, which celebrates the generosity and gratuity with which God poured himself out through Mary.

The model of total gratuity is Christ. Paul recites, in the Letter to Philippians 2:6-11, the magnificent hymn that the Church has prayed since the beginning.