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OMELIE / Omelie EN

25 lug 2021
25/07/2021 - 17 Sunday in O. T. - year B

25/07/2021 - 17 Sunday in O. T. - year B

Reading 1 2KINGS 4,42-44 Psalm 144/145 Reading 2 EPH 4,1-6 Gospel JN 6,1-15

The prophet Elisha takes a great leap of faith. A hundred people came to listen to Him, and he feels the duty to feed them. Twenty pieces of bread made of barley and new grain had been gifted to him, his only resource. The disciple is ashamed to put in front of a hundred people a number of pieces of bread completely insufficient, but the prophet knows instead that God had given him everything he needs: he does not want to doubt God. And God rewards his faith.

Such a great prodigy, nay, even greater, happens in Jesus' hands. He has in front of Him five thousand people and only five pieces of barley bread. What happened thanks to that little bread and Jesus’ prayer has awakened the attendees' memory. They have understood that Jesus is “the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world”, so the one promised by God and awaited by the whole people. This crowd had understood, but it was not able to jump to the right conclusions. The crowd agrees He deserves to guide the people with authority and it wants to declare Him king: it wants Jesus to be in charge, to be in command, and to think and promise again to take care of practical problems, social and political. The crowd wants to dictate Jesus behaviours useful to its living on earth. The conclusion it should have been able to jump to instead should have been the following: since you are the prophet, tell us what we should do, how we should live. The crowd did not react in this way, but we can do it.

We will tell Jesus: «You are really He who gives us the Father’s Word. Talk to us, and we will listen to you. We will imitate your example. We will let ourselves be guided by you.». The crowds will never reach this conclusion, never crowds will be able to decide to let Jesus guide them: every single person can realise this with a decision made in the secret of their heart.

Each one of us can behave like the boy who has confided to Jesus' hands all he had, all his bread. He is the only one who knew to trust the Lord fully, and so his simple faith has become a gift for all the crowd. Jesus could make use of the faith of that boy in order to reveal Himself and give the people the sign of the Father’s surprising love. And so Jesus has shown us how we could live, even if we are many: we can live as brothers, making available to one another what we own.

There is no more beautiful joy and truer and greater than the one you enjoy in a brotherhood. Using our things in order to live and show love, in order to behave like brethren, lets suppose too the presence and love of God the Father: this is why the joy spreads when we make ourselves available to serve one another. And in these occasions the little you have becomes enough, always. If only the whole world was like this! Jesus has come and has prayed so the whole world might be like that! He starts with us.

If we want the world to change, we need to start. We are the ones who knows how to do so the world may become a kingdom of brothers and sisters. We start obeying Jesus, thanking the Father, looking not at our comfort and pleasure, but at the brother’s needs. We put in Jesus’ hands our energies and our wealth, and He will transform the world in a brotherhood. If you do not start, nobody will begin in your environment. If you ignore Jesus’ presence and words, you will increase someone else’s sufferings, a few or many people's around you. You will start and continue. This is the special “vocation” which Saint Paul is talking about writing to the Ephesians, the call we have received by the Father, to love one another with humility and preserve unity with all our strength. We are called to show the world that one God exists, the God who loves men and is a father and a mother for them. Our vocation is wonderful: we cannot ignore it, unless we want to be unhappy and sad. God is calling us to be brethren, to be one body and one Spirit and become a brotherhood!