OMELIE / Omelie EN

13 gen 2019

13/01/2019 - The Baptism of the Lord - Year C 

13/01/2019 - The Baptism of the Lord - Year C 

Reading 1 IS 40,1-5.9-11 Psalm 103 Reading 2 TI 2,11-14; 3,4-7 Gospel LK 3,15-16.21-22

“Comfort, give comfort to my people”! These are the first words that God addresses us today. In the prophet Isaiah’s times the people of God has found itself in great anguish: the most prominent personalities and the best craftsmen had been deported to Babylon, and there they were living in a condition resembling slavery. In Jesus’ times, too, the people was suffering greatly under the Roman domination, Herod and the high priests, all of them showing no mercy to the poor. And today the Christian people continues to live among poverty and discomfort, temptations and persecutions, due not only to great people’s selfishness, but also due to its own sin. God’s word therefore brings a breath of hope, light, joy! He invites us to prepare the way because He wants to come, wants to meet us, wants to show us his love of good and caring shepherd.

The prophet’s word of hope is completed by John the Baptist’s announcement in the page from the Gospel: God is not waiting any more, the One He is sending to act on His authority is already present and begins to take action within the people! As a matter of fact He baptizes, that is to say submerges, in the Holy Spirit, giving new life, the life of God Himself.

John’s words are not enough to introduce us the one coming: the Father intervenes to reveal Him through the image of the dove and His voice. Jesus is praying, all immersed in God’s love, concentrated on a dialogue that remains a secret for us, but that we can image resembling the one He lived in the Garden of Olives: it is for sure a dialogue in which He volunteers in making the will of God come true, a will of salvation for the sinning men that are gathered around Him. In this way he fulfills what has been written about Him and His Father can take pride in it. While the dove draws our eyen on Him, the new and penetrating voice repeats solemn and mysterious prophecies. These show us who the son of whom the second Psalm is telling us is, a Son destined to reign forever with God’s authority, that is to say with compassionate and faithful love, and who is the one the prophet Isaiah defines as God’s joy! This is the man that John has baptized, the man that has lowered Himself together with all those that had decided to begin their conversion. He will guide everybody to the true conversion, he will become the leader of a new people walking firmly towards Jerusalem, towards the offering of His life in order to fulfill the Father’s will!

This people Saint Paul is referring to while he writes his beloved disciple Titus. Jesus wants “to cleanse for himself a people as his own” and to this end “gave himself for us”. He has offered Himself “to deliver us from all lawlessness”, He has offered Himself to give back to God the price through which obtains our salvation. We will never be able to obtain with our good deeds the Father’s mercy! The Father is already merciful, and Jesus has already obtained for us His love. We unite ourselves to Him, we let ourselves be washed by the blessed Baptism and by the Holy Spirit Jesus has breathed on His own people. From Jesus we learn to live in a new way, because He is “training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age”, as it has already been told us during the Christmas Mass.

The Christian life is completely new. We do not live in a selfish way, in order to gain something, or in order to reach Heaven, nor do we live to earn the Father’s praises. Knowing to be already perfectly and fully loved, we live thanking Him. We make of our lives a thanksgiving. We are so happy about God’s promises and to be able to see already their fulfillment, that we keep to say never-ending thanks. The Eucharist is indeed a thanksgiving, nay «the» thanksgiving for the great mysteries with which God realizes and makes us part of His love. So, thankful to God, we will try to live in a way to show our gratitude, and that is why we will keep ourselves away from the distractions that the world presents us every day, and we will be very careful not to let us be cheated by the temptations with which it wants to make us fall into shallowness and materialism.

Obeying the Lord’s desires, we will become consolation for the sufferers we meet and that knock at our heart asking for a word, a smile, a clue to be able to rise up from what is upsetting them. Thankful, we will become consolation, a tool with which God spreads His tenderness in the world that is still suffering for the sin that is spread everywhere. “Give comfort to my people”: united to Jesus, I, too, will spread God’s consolation!