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OMELIE / Omelie EN

02 ago 2020
2/08/2020 – 18th Sunday in O. T. - A

2/08/2020 – 18th Sunday in O. T. - A

Reading 1 IS 55,1-3  Psalm  144/145 Reading 2 ROM 8,35.37-39  Gospel  MT 14,13-21

 

Today’s Word is helping us understand the prayer we address to the Father. The crowd searching for Jesus, in fact, is freed from its innumerable troubles by the Lord and His disciples. He realises that all of those who come to Him are suffering, either because of some sickness or because of spiritual unbalance. And He helps them by healing the sick and giving out his teachings for a long period of time. At the end, He also takes care of hunger and He frees them from being enslaved to money.  “Give them some food yourselves”, He tells the dumbstruck disciples, who only have five loaves and two fish. They were already thinking of emptying their purse, but without success, without solving the problem.

In His generous hands, instead, those few loaves become enough for everyone. Sharing is the solution to all problems. Many, during the history of the Church, have understood and practiced this choice of Jesus’! The history of Christianity is full of examples of people who, faithfully, have shared the little they owned, and so they have started a chain of solidarity that have solved or eased the sufferings of thousands of people, of entire peoples. It is a pity we close away these people among the Saints in paradise, and we forget they were just like us and they had to move in a world like ours.

We can think of Saint Therese of Calcutta, and, before her, of Saint Camille of Lellis, of Saint John of God, of Saint Vincent of Paoli, of Saint John Bosco, of Saint Joseph Benedict Cottolengo, of Father Orion, of Saint John Calabria, and of many many others: a lot of them are still alive and working in different places on earth. Those loaves have been useful to Jesus in order to feed those “five thousand men, not counting women and children”, but above all in order to show us the Eucharist as the true bread that from His hands goes to the disciples' and from them to the crowd. The actions He takes with those loaves in His hands are the movements we repeat every Mass. He “took” them, “looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds”. The Eucharist is God’s gift to the crowd hungry, confused, sick, desiring life and unity. The Eucharist celebrated and lived as an occasion for unity with the brethren, a unity based on Jesus’ sacrifice, is the true nourishment which gives strength and joy to men!

The invitation addressed to us by the prophet Isaiah becomes effective in celebrating the Eucharist. . “All you who are thirsty come to the water. You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat. Come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk”! Wine and milk, so joy and nourishment, what is necessary for both the physical life and for the spiritual one, everything we receive truly for free in the eucharistic celebration, obviously when we live it and we take properly part in it! In it we are reunited to the Lord Jesus, to His sacrifice to the father, to His greatest love. And nothing then will be able to separate us from Him, not tribulations, not persecution, not temptations, not worries regarding the past or the future. Saint Paul reassures us, he who had experienced it, that united to Jesus we will win over anything that is insidious for us and is insidious for our faith!

Therefore, we will not let ourselves to be distracted from taking part in the Eucharist: it will not distract us the shining sun, nor the crystal sea, nor fun traveling nor the mountains. I mean we will not find excuses for missing the Mass, at least on Sunday! We will always be able to choose what is vital for us. What Jesus did is indispensable for us, otherwise how we will manage to eat enough to stand tall in a world which keeps undermining our faith? And if the faith disappears, very fast will disappear also the charity and peace in the world.

Let us welcome the prophet's invitation, imitating the crowds that obey Jesus and sit on the grass. He will not have them waiting for His food. We will eat His flesh, so we will live in His offer to the Father with a truly sincere love. We will receive in this way the strength of the Holy Spirit which keeps is united and ready to offer ourselves in order to make God's love concrete.