OMELIE / Omelie EN

29 lug 2018

29/07/2018  17th Sunday of O. T. - B 

29/07/2018  17^th Sunday of O. T. - B 

Reading 1, Second Kings 4,42-44 * Psalm 144 * Reading 2, Ephesians 4,1-6 * Gospel, John 6,1-15

“All look to you in hope and you feed them with the food of the season”. The responsorial psalm makes us pray with these words, that we can see becoming true through both the prophet Elisha (first reading) and, above all, Jesus! The prophet is positive that the bread he received as a gift cannot be too few for the people with him. It is a gift from God, and we cannot accuse God of being mean. In case we were as generous as him, nothing would be missing, ever! Jesus is even more positive than the prophet: a big crowd gathers around Him in the days just before Easter, they come to Him instead of going to Jerusalem; this is a sign that that crowd is searching for Him like it would for God! They want to be with Him, even if they do not have anything to eat. Jesus sees those people and the faith that is driving them. Everybody is sure that they have found the Savior, and that they are hearing from Him God's Word. Jesus does not want to delude them. However, He does not want to take action by Himself, because now He is part of a single family with His disciples. He wants them to be part of His projects too, and of His actions. What would they do?

Philip cannot believe their bad luck: he is making calculations using the wallet, but through these calculations the situation seems without solution. Andrew instead looks around, searching for possible sources of food, but these are so poor that is not even possible to take them into consideration. Jesus instead takes the little things that can be given to Him very seriously: whatever is offered to the Father and taken from His hand as a gift from Him, becomes enough food for everybody!

Obeying Jesus, everybody sits on the grass: not even Moses had been so great! In fact, the people guided by Moses were asked to stand, walk in the desert and wait longingly for the place in which to rest. Jesus is greater than Moses, He is the One giving birth to a new people and bringing it truly to its resting spot. He, for this people, begins a new way of living: it is a cooperative way, in which everybody offers themselves and what they have to God, so then there will be nothing they will want. Men who are filled by the five pieces of bread given by the boy are many, way more than the men filled by the prophet Elisha: they are as many as the ones in the first Church of Jerusalem (Acts 4,4)! And the apostles have learned their lesson: in fact, that Church will live exactly like that, dividing what they had among themselves.

Something else is new: the leftovers of the bread given out by the disciples do not remain with the men, who are already full: nobody has to save them for later, nobody has to become richer. Every leftover goes back in the hands of the Apostles, that will have again the duty to feed the people with the bread, gift from God, the bread of thanksgiving, the bread of fraternity, the bread of unity!

Everybody understood who Jesus is, but not completely. Those who thought they had understood something, demonstrate that they did not catch the most important thing. They want Jesus to become a king, a king obeying their desire of material wellbeing. Jesus is really a king, but king of God's kingdom, king that cannot obey the selfish desires of men! The king of God's kingdom needs to obey the Father, make His paternity shine, and this can happen only making men live as brethren! Jesus, instead of giving commands like a king, will have to die in order for men to see their sins forgiven, otherwise they would not be able to live as brethren! He, then, keeps Himself hidden, searches for a solitary place where to pray and win again over the temptation of power, the enemy of fraternity!

The reading of the page from Saint Paul gives us the reasons why the believers need to live as brothers, and gives us all the necessary instructions. Those reasons are deep: we are a single body, a single spirit lives in us, we have the same hope, the same vocation makes us similar, the same faith, the same baptism, and we obey the same Lord. The God we adore is everybody's Father, and then we cannot create division in His family. It is not possible for us to be fake witnesses of God's will, that wants us all brothers!

Humility, meekness, patience, endurance, will of peace, even to the point to lose something: these are the rules of Christian life. They are difficult rules to follow according to our selfish habits, but very effective towards harmony, peace, growth of fraternity among us. We will be a people able to share, to give away the little things we own, to accept with gratitude from Jesus, through the Apostles' hands, everything that our life needs. We will then be able to be seated at the presence of the Lord in communion with many brethren!