OMELIE / Omelie EN

04 set 2022

04/09/2022 – 23rd Sunday in O. T. – year C

04/09/2022 – 23^rd Sunday in O. T. – year C

Reading 1 WIS 9,13-18 Psalm 89 Reading 2 PHNM 1,9-10.12-17 Gospel LK 14, 25-33

God wants us to be happy by giving us the fullness of life! He knows the way leading to our true happiness, He who has created us. We cannot teach Him anything, even less when He is showing us His wisdom regarding our life. We are weighted down and our mind is clouded by the desires of the body, its passions, and therefore we need a light that can come only from the Father’s wisdom. This is what today’s first reading is insisting on. And it is really true: we can often see it when we see how some people even go so far as easily discard even the spouse whom they have promised faithfulness for life to. In fact, regarding these choices, they are not asking for God the Father’s advice, nor they accept the advice He has already given before. By following their momentary whims, whims which are born out of pleasure, they create a situation of suffering both for themselves and for others. If we were able or we had the will to look for God’s wisdom, our life would always be walking on paths of peace and serenity.

God’s way, the safe and straight one, in Jesus. This is why He Himself is advising us to follow Him, to take Him as main and only reference point. “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple”.

Many people were following the Lord, but He knew some of them had personal interests and they were not ready to suffer for Him. This is why He said, almost in order to disappoint and upset those who were with Him for other reasons, that those who are not ready to go against their relatives and even themselves would not be able to endure at His side either. They who seriously love Jesus, in fact, sooner or later are not understood by their very relatives. The latter might give them a difficult choice to make: parents and children, brothers and sisters, friends, spouse, everyone can become an enemy for those who love Jesus.

They who love Jesus become lovely, reliable, generous, loyal, honest, pure, truthful, free from any deception. These beautiful qualities could look like accusation or judgement, so be insufferable, to those who would like to live according to their own instincts and pleasures, to whom has material interests to defend or reach at all costs. Those who want to stay with Jesus will have to understand they are not following a person who is constantly performing miracles, but one who will die on the cross despised by the great and abandoned by everyone.

Would you like to become one of His disciples? You should double check your calculations: are you able to face being without the the love of your relatives? Are you up for giving up your own desires and the wealth of the world?

Jesus Himself is giving us two examples: you are going to add things up like those who set out to build a very expensive building, or like the king who needs to assemble an army against his enemy. Think well you too: up to which point you can bear solitude, mocking, spite coming from the people you love? If you cannot do it, do not set out to follow Him: you would find yourself abandoning Him in the middle of everything.

The second reading is giving us another example: Saint Paul asks his friend Philemon to make an inconvenient decision in order to live and show his faith. He is asking him to welcome back the slave who had run away and become a believer in the meantime. He is asking him to take him back not as a slave anymore, but as a brother. In fact, Jesus’ love changes us, and is also changing our relationships with others. By being with Him we learn a new love above everyone and everything, to the point we can review our own decisions!

Jesus is life, is completeness. Whoever start living with Him do not stand anymore to be without His presence, they cannot be far from Him anymore. Let us stay a little time alone with Jesus, learning from Him, and then you will be able to stand the deprivation of everything and everyone, and you will be a true faithful disciple. The sacrifices are necessary to become steadfast.