OMELIE / Omelie EN

04 feb 2018

4/02/2018  5th Sunday of O. T. - B 

4/02/2018  5^th Sunday of O. T. - B 

Reading 1, Job 7,1-4.6-7 * Psalm 146 * Reading 2, First Corinthians 9,16-19.22-23 * Gospel, Mark 1,29-39

Job speaks for many sick and depressed people. Only think how many people are suffering like him, because they cannot find a meaning and a reason for their troubles, for their days, for their suffering, not even for their joys, for their own life itself! Job would like to be able not to go to sleep any more, in order not to be troubled by insomnia, he would like to be able to never get up, in order not to face the tasks coming with a new day. However, he does something positive: he addresses his complaints to the Lord, and he is waiting for an answer only from Him! He is not content of talking to himself, not even of blaming others, but he puts himself in front of God, who knows even too well the fragility of the life of the man, His creature!

The Gospel also is telling about the sick. Here we see Jesus coming into contact with the situation of suffering that characterizes all men. He pays attention to what they are telling Him: Simon’s mother-in-law has fever. He is not afraid, he does not distance Himself, like all the others would have done in order to avoid the condition of impurity according to the law; instead, not taking notice of the rules of the scribes’, with a gesture of great humanity, he draws near, He shows attention to her, and He helps her rise taking her hand. After His tender act of love, the woman leaves the bed and starts serving. This is the most natural consequence of every true encounter with Jesus and it is a sign of authentic health: whoever meets Jesus, receives from Him the strength necessary to love with humility and full availability. Whoever meets Jesus finds the meaning of their life! Whoever meets Jesus and knows that they are loved by Him, becomes a servant of men, witness of God’s love for everybody, little and poor! This is perfect health. Whoever does not put himself at the service of the brethren, even if he stand and was able to run, he would not have perfect health: he has a very deep and consuming sickness.

The act of love of Jesus towards the sick woman is attractive to many, many other sick and suffering people, that are now showing up. Everybody gets some kind of benefit, even those people that are suffering because they hold in their hearts complaints, revolts, resentments, voices condemning the others, the tendency to see only themselves: these are all unclean spirits, that are not coming from God. Jesus’ voice makes them flee, His look of goodness makes them disappear, and only peace remains in the hearts!

What is Jesus’ secret? He does not look for people, he looks for the Father. He really searches for Him. In fact, early in the morning, He sets Himself aside, alone, in order to pray. To see Jesus searching for solitude it is a very powerful lesson, uncomfortable: many of us would rather not to see it. And yet, the very moment in which His presence would do a great good to many, Jesus retires to the silence of the prayer. Did he come to heal the sick? Has He been sent by the Father in order to cure some, or maybe many? He is asking these very questions to Himself as well, and he discovers that His task and His duty are way greater than healing men of physical or spiritual sicknesses.

Recoveries are a sign that the Kingdom of Heaven is here, are the good news of the Father’s love in a tangible form. Jesus is here to announce the Kingdom of God with words and signs, in order to be recognized as gift from the Father! He prays, and He distances Himself: He draws nearer to the Father while distancing Himself from men, in order to really help them. He does not want that the citizens of Capernaum take Him for a healer. The job of a healer stops to the physical side and does not look for the “advantage” of God, does not bring men to the obedience to God, it does not help them to welcome Jesus!

Jesus cured men not because he despised sickness, but because of a true pity for the man, in order then to announce him the Father’s love. Many sick men were still sick: Jesus was not worried about that, because suffering from a sickness can be always offered as a sacrifice that God likes, in the way in which He offered the pain to be rejected and that of the agony and death. This is why, to whom is searching for Him for their own advantage, he answers: “Let us go elsewhere…”. His duty is to preach, to announce, to touch men’s ears and their hearts with the word of God’s love, in order for them to recognize Him as a Father and obey Him!

To preach the Gospel, the good news, is also the task received by Saint Paul, the one he is always reminding. He strongly highlights it while writing to the Corinthians: he feels like a pressing duty to preach the good news, to announce it for free, to announce it to everybody and in every possible way.

To love the men actually means not to leave them without the knowledge of what is more important for them, of what has an eternal value. Did you know that to love the men means to give them the love of God, and therefore give them Jesus? Jesus is the perfection of the heart of the man, his cure, the fulfillment of his life. Is the sick, when he has Jesus in His heart, not indeed happier, more fulfilled, even we could say «healthier» than a person living only with himself and for himself?

Come, Lord Jesus, announce to me as well the Kingdom of the Father!