OMELIE / Omelie EN

24 ago 2025

24/08/2025 - 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C

24/08/2025 - 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C

First reading Is 66:18-21 from Psalm 116 Second reading Heb 12:5-7, 11-13 Gospel Lk 13:22-30

Jesus continues his determined journey towards Jerusalem. He knows that this journey is a school of spiritual formation for his disciples, who must be initiated into offering their lives to God together with him, as a sacrifice, in place of the sacrifices offered and burned on the only altar of the temple.

To train his disciples, Jesus takes advantage of their own questions and doubts. This time they listen to his answer to a man who is curious to know how many people will be saved, or, in other words, how many will go to Heaven, and thinks that there will be few: in fact, few are those who manage to do everything that the scribes teach.

The disciples think of heaven as a state of bliss that man earns through his good works or good qualities. They follow the current mindset, the opinions of the Pharisees and their rabbis. It is not easy for Jesus to answer their question, or rather, he knows that it is difficult for them to understand the novelty of his love.

The disciples expect their Master to say how many people are able to observe the law, while he will have to say how many he himself will save through his death and resurrection.

‘Strive to enter through the narrow gate’, Jesus tells them. What is this narrow gate? It is the cross of Jesus. This is the gate through which we can ‘know’ the Lord. He will have to say to many, “I do not know you”, because many, despite belonging to the people God has chosen, and despite having done good works, have never really wanted to meet him and have never participated in his life, a life that offers and sacrifices itself.

In fact, it is not enough to have heard about Jesus or to belong to a special group or to have listened to some of his messages to be able to say that we know him. Those who truly know him are those who share his desires, who embrace his way of living and loving, who drink with him from his cup! Those who boast of having been present at some event where he was the centre of attention are not his for that reason: he must leave them where they are, under the same judgement as the world that is his enemy.

Even those who have struggled greatly in life, whether because of work, illness, or the satisfaction of feeling like a benefactor of humanity, will not be saved because of this: those who accept the Son of God have new life, the life of God. Those who do not accept him remain distant from him, and therefore also from God.

Jesus must disappoint his listeners.

Most of those who are saved will not be Jews, but will come from pagan peoples, as the prophets have already said.

We Christians will pay attention to these words of Jesus. The fact that we have grown up in a Christian people does not guarantee us anything: each of us must welcome the Lord into our own lives. And to do this, so that our welcome of him may be worthy of his holiness and bear fruit of salvation for the world, we need to be helped, to be corrected in many of our attitudes.

The Christian who accepts correction is a good Christian. Indeed, the true disciple desires to be corrected: he knows that he is not perfect, that he needs help to conform himself to the Son of God. The good disciple of the Lord will therefore seek to confide in some brother who is more mature in the faith in order to receive suggestions, he will seek to express his difficulties and his choices, and thus be often corrected in the way he lives his life.

Let us walk with Jesus towards Jerusalem and enter through the narrow gate: we will therefore try to follow in the footsteps of someone who walks with love on the path of offering himself to the Father, like Jesus!