OMELIE / Omelie EN

10 lug 2022

10/07/2022 – 15th Sunday in O. T. - year C

10/07/2022 – 15^th Sunday in O. T. - year C

Reading 1 DEU 30,10-14 Psalm 18 Reading 2 COL 1,15-20 Gospel LK 10,25-37

“Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God”: Saint Paul introduces our Lord and Master to us in this way! He in fact had said of Himself: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”. Knowing the Father is life for us, because by knowing our Father, we know who we ourselves are, which spiritual possibilities we have, where we can and we must aim to get to. Is not by chance that Jesus has said: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent”.

We can know the Father by looking at and listening to Jesus: He is the one who lives His very love for the man, His very will about salvation and His very wisdom. Jesus is giving us the Father’s words without altering them and without silly simplifications. Again, it is Him who makes us see concretely how our love for God and love for men could be.

Our faith in this way is not influenced by human fantasies: we have the concrete person of Jesus, His words and His behaviour to reckon with. We can learn from Him, and from Him we can also receive the strength to imitate Him.

It is from His very lips that today we receive important words to guide our capacity for love. Firstly, our love needs to be focused on God. This advice makes you think you are far from this world, in a very faraway time in the past. And instead loving God is the first source of serenity, happiness, truth for everyone, even those who say they are not believers. His Word, in fact, “is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out”, it is therefore on the lips and in the heart of every man who comes into the world. So the Bible we have read is saying. But nowadays there is something in the air that wants to make us love only ourselves. Nowadays are fashionable some philosophies which highlight above everything else the attention we give to our own emotions, what we can feel, what things look like and what makes us stand out. Someone is also thinking of loving their neighbor, but only if that is not detrimental to their own feelings. They do it to feel good, to look educated, to convince themselves that they are doing ok, maybe even better than others, everything done without the need for making any reference to God.

Jesus’ teaching, in line with the Bible’s, puts the love for God first, and loving the neighbours as the logic consequence of this, as the fruits which show how good and authentic is the former.

Whoever love their neighbour because they love God is free from being conditioned by the unexpected reactions of the neighbours, who could not even notice you love them, could think of your love like nosiness, and answer back badly or remain indifferent. If you love God above all things, you will continue to love even those who misunderstand your love.

Jesus has told the parable of the Samaritan to show us true love, divine. The Samaritan has loved the poor victim even knowing he was a Jew, and maybe he would have not even wanted to be touched by him, who was considered a heretic. He has then given two silver coins to the owner of the hotel so he could continue to love the wounded man. The two silver coins – according to one of the Fathers of the Church – would in fact be the representation of both the love for God and the love for the neighbour. If you are taking care of someone, you need to do it with this double love.

Whoever claims to love God only, he could even be a priest in the temple and, as that very same one, move on ignoring the sufferings of others. Whoever loves men without loving God is at risk of giving only material, earthly help. He is even at risk of abandoning the wounded man to his own devices, so leaving him to die. Whoever only offers material health does not give the possibility of a full, true recovery.

We want to obey Jesus, who tells us: “Go and do likewise”! I will look at men with God’s eyes, I will love them through His heart: to be able to do so I will always try to be careful to see the Father’s face and listen to His Son’s Word, both when I meet a person who is suffering of body sicknesses, and when I meet someone who is suffering from lack of love, because he does not have experienced and enjoyed the true, unconditional love, God’s, who is always above all interested in the soul. We learn this from Jesus and His Saints.