ME
NU

OMELIE / Omelie EN

26 ago 2018
26/08/2018  21st Sunday in O. T. - B 

26/08/2018  21st Sunday in O. T. - B 

Reading 1, JOS 24,1-2.15-17.18 * Psalm 33 * Reading 2, EPH 5,21-32 * Gospel,  JN 6,60-69

 

The Jews could not understand Jesus' words: a hard way to talk, they said. If we had been in their shoes, we would have said the same: in fact, we would like to understand always everything, as well. Me too, I have this tendency, to believe what I understand, to decide and to do only what I understood. We cannot then be surprised if the Jews too have shown this difficulty to Jesus!

Jesus is proposing us instead to trust Him, trust Him completely. When we believe in Him and we obey Him, He can shower on us His Spirit, and His Spirit let us understand even God's mysteries; a thing impossible for our mind! The Holy Spirit makes the Lord's words shine and enlightens with them all our life too, in order for us to see it in the same way the Father does!

We can understand Jesus' words only with the wisdom coming from His Spirit! This is why it is necessary, indispensible, that, first of all, we love and obey Him with complete trust. Whatever He tells us, we believe it is true, because His Word is God's Word. We are not the ones to judge if what Jesus says and how much He is asking of us is true and good. After we will entrust ourselves to Him with full abandonment and trust, believing that He is not fooling us, but that He knows everything and He knows what is good for us, then we will be able to receive His Spirit and we will understand the beauty and goodness of what He is telling us and asking of us. Faith needs to come before understanding, because Jesus is God and His Word is God's Word.

Not all of those who would like to be His disciples accept to take this step. Who was with Him then, he was not luckier than us: he needed to make an act of trust, that act that costs us our pride and the support of the approval of our mind and public opinion. In those times like today: " many … returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him".

Jesus does not let the mass defection of the disciples influence Him. On the contrary, He asks the Apostles too if they would like to leave. Jesus is ready to be left alone, but not to surrender, not to change the rules of the game, not to make easier to follow Him.

This decision of Jesus' is similar to the one proposed by Joshua to the entire people of Israel: "If it does not please you to serve the Lord, decide today whom you will serve,… As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord". In that occasion the whole people, in the memory of the miracles with which God had accompanied them in leaving Egypt, chose firmly to be faithful to God of the Covenant. Saint Peter alone answers Jesus, but he is answering for the entire group of the Twelve. They have realized that Jesus' words are not human words, but that His words communicate life, fullness of life, the one coming from above. They have first of all believed, they have entrusted themselves to Him, and then they came to know Him as the "Holy One of God", as the Messiah, sent by the Father for the salvation.

From obeying comes understanding. This is true also for the topic introduced by Saint Paul. He speaks about family life, in particular about the relationship between spouses. How do married people need to behave towards each other? The temptation that is always there is to overcome each other. Christian spouses instead live "subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ"! They take example from Jesus, head of the Church. Jesus kneeled down to wash the disciples' feet, He gave up His life for the Church. In the same way the husband needs to try to love his wife, serving her, offering himself, not prevailing. The wife will do as the Church, that tries to listen carefully to her Lord's Word. The wife will take part in her own way to this love contest. She will be meek, obedient to the husband, and the latter will not think of himself to live in selfishness, but he will take care to pursue his wife's good. A life lived in this way, helped by the grace coming from above, becomes a sacramental life: that is to say, a God's Word become flesh, the word announcing Jesus' love for His own, Jesus' faithfulness to His church. The world cannot be deprived of this message: it is not given to men only through the preachers' words, but above all through the Christians' life, the life of the spouses living in the name of Jesus.

Everybody rejoices seeing the unity of the families, the love living inside them, the love that is able to serve and to suffer, to persevere in the difficulties. The first to be satisfied by it are the spouses themselves and their children.

Blessed is the family that obeys the Lord’s word: its joy is never-ending, the fruit of its love enriches the Earth. It is testimony that Jesus is truly the Holy One of God and that His word gives life to the world!