OMELIE / Omelie EN

29 ago 2021

29/08/2021 - 22nd Sunday in O.T. - B

29/08/2021 - 22^nd Sunday in O.T. - B

DT 4,1-2.6-8 Psalm 14/15 JAS 1,17-18.21b.22.27 Gospel MK 7,1-8.14-15.21-23

How many times we find in the Sacred Scriptures the invitation to listen! Of course to listen to the Lord. I am realising that this is the most important invitation. Listening means giving importance to someone other than ourselves, in this case to God. If you do not listen, practically, you give importance to your feelings, your instincts, the ideas you have been forming, the conclusions our intelligence is jumping to, even if we realize our opinions are quite limited. If we do not listen to God, we listen to the intuitions of our intimate, which are often temptations.

Jesus says that “from within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly”. All these situations bring men to ruin, to desperation, to unhappiness, to not knowing their purpose in life anymore, and therefore the purpose of labouring and working, to not enjoying anymore friendship, to not being able anymore of being brothers. If they come from the heart, it is necessary to guard over it very carefully, nay, we need to fill it with Word of God, so goodness, purity, generosity, meekness, the ability to be in communion and mercy can be rooted in it.

The mentality which is around us is bringing us to follow every, really every, stimulus which comes from our intimate, because the world does not know and does not want to recognize that inside us humans might reside evil too, or the roots of evil. It does not recognise it, because it does not accept the possibility of mortification, of rejecting our whims, of restraining ourselves: it does not accept the cross. We need to stay firmly hooked on the Word of God in order to resist this mystification. From within us can come evil, while the true good, every good, can come only from God. Saint James is repeating this for us. “All good giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights”. Even life comes from Him, since it is the fruit of his Word: “He willed to give us birth by the word of truth”. What kind of life do we live? What kind of life we would like to live? A cold life or one warmed up by love? How important is listening!

“Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you and is able to save your souls”: it is the Word of our God which is warming us up and generates in us a holy life full of love, joyful and generous.

Already Moses was advising the people to be constantly listening to God: only His words and His commandments guarantee salvation, if they are obeyed. It is the word of God the source of the wisdom and intelligence, of the health and stability. Who is not aware of it? In the families and societies which do not keep, for example, the ten commandments, which stability can remain? What trust you can live in them with? In them you need to suspect everyone, you cannot rest. How many types of sickness both mental and physical befall people of any age, when the commandments of God are not brightening anymore the way or do not have the strength anymore to guide and orient the hearts and the minds, the choices and the actions!

“Hear the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you to observe, that you may live”. To ignore the words of God and not looking for their light mean to let in ourselves still the original sin, the sin of pride and superiority which wants us to live according to our whims and our limited opinions. We cannot eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: that tree belongs to God. We cannot decide what is good or evil by ourselves: men’s laws, men who want to ignore God’s wisdom, thinking they have something better, bring to the destruction of peoples. Moses' words are still valid, for our very society too. The people which takes into account God’s law is wise and knowledgeable: in this way it follows the path of life. “Hear me, all of you, and understand”, Jesus keeps telling us!