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OMELIE / Omelie EN

18 ago 2019
18/08/2019 – 20th Sunday in O. T. Year C

18/08/2019 – 20th Sunday in O. T. Year C

Reading 1 JER 38,4-6.8-10 * Psalm 39 * Reading 2 HEB 12,1-4 * Gospel LK 12,49-53

 

Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?”. With these words Jesus closes the conversation, challenging and maybe even painful for the crowds that were listening to it.

He knows that all of His listeners have some criteria for judging things, but they use them only in regard of the material ones. All of them, for example, looking at the weather, can tell, from the direction of the wind or from the temperature, if it is going to be good weather or bad weather. Nobody instead wants to use their discretion to evaluate facts and draw conclusions. Nobody wants to say: since Jesus is freeing the oppressed, letting the blind see again, announcing joy to the poor, then this means that He is the promised Messiah, the one sent by God! Nobody dares to say that: everyone is waiting for the chiefs or the scribes to take sides, or the most religious people, like the Pharisees. All of them are afraid to jump to conclusions by themselves. The consequences of a healthy judgment in fact, when they will come, will create division even among the dearest people, someone will become a persecutor, in some cases there will even be the risk of death. The first to die is going to be Jesus Himself! He is waiting for this moment, and He is waiting for it not like it was a disgrace, but like a baptism, so a new beginning, a passage to a new life for Himself and to new circumstances for the whole world. He knows that His passion and death will give start to a movement that is similar to the fire burning through a forest! Everything will be different! A fire means purification, is preparing the space for new things, and is light that brightens the night.

Jesus is eagerly waiting for this fire to rage, a fire brought by Him. It is the gospel, the new life of the Spirit, the joyful life of whom knows to be loved by the Father: this news will produce envy, jealousy, rage. Many will show themselves as wolves ready to attack those who live this joyful life following the Lamb and living like lambs!

This situation is not new, already Jeremiah and many prophets have experienced it. The first reading shows us the moment in which the prophet Jeremiah is persecuted. He has hoped in the Lord, as the Psalm sings: “I have waited, waited for the Lord, and he stooped toward me… He drew me out of the pit of destruction, … he made firm my steps”. Really Jesus can pray like this, because He has been set free from death, in a surprising way: He has been freed after entering it, after having experienced it. He is greater than the prophets, His baptism is complete: He has got in and out of the waters of death with the resurrection, without the need for men to free Him, as happened in Jeremiah's case! He is in front of our eyes on the cross and has taken his seat at the right of the throne of God! We keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, we think of the different phases of His story lived among the sinners. In this way we are constantly strengthened and prepared to take on our struggle against sin and the struggle to live among the resistance that our faith meets. The author of the letter to the Hebrews pushes us to go “running” without hesitation towards that faith that is Jesus' work, and that He has perfected in us, and has been lived, to the point of shedding their blood, by so great a cloud of witnesses.

With the example of these we too will be really able, without fear and hesitation, to judge by ourselves what is right.

 

It is right for You, Jesus, to guide our life. You have offered Yourself to death for us, You have not been ashamed to call us Your brothers notwithstanding our sins, You have brought a controversial peace on earth. I offer myself to You: if I will find the cross, I know that You too are there carrying it, and I will not be afraid! I will be able to say to You: “Though I am afflicted and poor, yet the Lord thinks of me!”.