OMELIE / Omelie EN

28 gen 2018

28/01/2018  4ª Sunday of O. T. - B 2006 

28/01/2018  4ª Sunday of O. T. - B 2006 

Reading 1, Deuteronomy 18,15-20 * Psalm 94 * Reading 2, First Corinthians 7,32-35 * Gospel, Mark 1,21-28

The people of Israel feared the presence of God and His voice. This is what the book of Deuteronomy tells. God instead, in His fatherly love, does not stop communicating with the people and He chooses a different way, the one we now know as well: “From their own brothers I shall raise up a prophet like yourself; I shall put my words into his mouth and he will tell them everything I command him”! and here He is, Jesus, among them, giving us the Word of God, telling us about the Father’s plans, His proposals, and He is showing us His ways, even better, He Himself becomes “way” for us. “You will listen to him”, said Moses, and God Himself, the Father, on the mountain of the transfiguration has strongly repeated it to the three disciples: “Listen to Him”!

Today, while reading the first page of the Gospel according to Mark, we notice Jesus that, for the very first time, “began to teach”: He did it on a Saturday, in the Synagogue of Capernaum, when everybody was concentrated on listening to the Word of God. The evangelist takes note twice of the amazement of those gathered “because, unlike the scribes, he taught them with authority”. They were noticing it because Jesus was letting them see His great love for the Father, with the certainty of His presence. He was not talking about learned things, but experienced things. In this way Jesus is letting the authority of God shine, an authority that becomes His own. This is clear to everybody: and we are also sure that the Word of Jesus is matching what our heart desires and all our life is waiting for! Jesus speaks words that edify our life, that make it grow until it reaches full maturity, that put it in a deep communion with God Himself, but also with the other men, both those in the family and in the society in which we live. The Word of Jesus is a Word that also sheds light on the harmonic relationship between us and the things in the world around us, up to the point of changing these very things into tools of which God makes use in order to make us understand even more easily His desires or His revelations.

“He taught them with authority”! This authority is felt even by the demons, and the episode registered today gives us demonstration of it. Satan can even take possession of the heart, of the body and the mouth of the man who comes with the other to pray in the holy place, but he cannot stand the Word of Jesus! For him it is too much. He, before showing himself as an enemy of the man, shows himself as an enemy of Jesus’, to the point of slandering Him in front of everybody. He knows that Jesus is “the Holy One of God”, but, even if he admits it, he accuses Him of having disruptive intentions: “Have you come to destroy us”! He brags proudly saying: “I know who you are”, but he does not bow nor he kneels in front of Him: he says it in order to get everybody’s attention. The Lord’s command urges him to reveal himself as who he really is , that is to say as the one who hates and mangles the man. In this way we can see who Jesus really is, the bearer of God’s authority and the one who makes His love for us become true! In this way we are helped give Him importance, listen to Him carefully, refuse all the temptations that would like to stop us searching for and welcoming His Word: they come from the enemy of ours and His! We can recognize the latter, when he tries to avoid that the Word of God reaches, or instead he despises it, or again he interprets it in favor of his own convenience, or even he makes it being forgotten right away like a thing of no importance.

The Word of the Lord silences him and makes him run, still while  mangling the man who was hosting him. It can happen that you become aware that you are not giving importance to the Word of Jesus, that you are forgetting it right away, that you think it is useless or unnecessary. What will you do? You will ask the priest for a benediction that would pull away the foreign spirit and would give you a new and strong love for everything that comes from the mouth of God!

The apostle Paul tells us which is the point to which a Christian can get when he gives weight to the Word of God! This is a journey that is always possible: it is possible, even better, it is necessary to think our dearest affections, the most sacred, as plunged in the love of our God and Father. Someone could even get to the point of renouncing human love in order to take completely care of the love of the Lord, he can even choose not to marry in order to take into account “how he can please the Lord”! Anyway, Jesus’ authority has to involve, not only thanks to the amazement, but also with the trustful and loving obedience. If His Word shows us His divine authority, then I want to listen to Him and I want to live according to His suggestions, even if this would mean – as we say – to go against the tide: it is against the tide of the world, but not against the tide of the fulfillment of our life and our true joy!