OMELIE / Omelie EN

18 giu 2023

18/06/2023 - 11th Sunday in O.T. - year A

18/06/2023 - 11^th Sunday in O.T. - year A

Reading 1 EX 19,2-6 Psalm 99 Reading 2 ROM 5,6-11 Gospel MT 9,36-10,8

God continues to talk to the people through Moses. It is moses who climbs the mountain, it is he who listens and then shares with the people God’s Word. God makes use of Moses’s mouth, brain and judgment, he needs to find the right words, times and places to pass on to the whole people His proposals. They, who will obey the word coming from Moses, will obey God and will get as a reward to be God’s very inheritance, so to enjoy all His benefits and become the sign of His presence and His love for all other peoples.

When Jesus comes, He realises how poorly is that people which had received all the great promises, but which, because of its leaders, cannot hear the Word of God anymore and so it is not in a position to show the Father’s love. He tells the disciples what he can see: lost people, like sheep without a shepherd, without a guide, without food, restless. What could Jesus possibly do in this situation?

First of all, He invites His disciples to pray: they need to ardently desire that someone may put himself at God’s disposal to give te people the spiritual nourishment needed for eternal life. Praying for someone means having great desire, so much so that we are making ourselves available with freedom and love for the realisation of the very desire we expressed. After preparing in this way the Twelve’s heart, He calls them so they can become themselves guide, shepherds, to share with the people the knowledge of the true God and the certainty of His closeness. He calls these Twelve by name, and He gives them the necessary skills for the task He wants to entrust them with. He gives them “authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness”. They then will have to win against the evil spread in the world, both physical and spiritual, both sickness of the body and of the soul.

The evil men are suffering from is created always by the enemy, the devil, who, by keeping their heart away from God, makes it disappointed and sad, fills it with selfish desires, false and deceiving, and gives way to uneasiness and sickness.

The workers of the Kingdom will have to face this evil at the source, so they will drive unclean spirits out of men’s heart. They, by announcing Jesus, will help men get rid of arrogance, jealousy, impure desires, attachment to wealth, desire for superiority, grandeur, vanity, dishonesty towards their family and work duties, false religiosity, superficiality, decisions made without taking into account God’s will. Jesus therefore gives them power over these spirits, the power of seeing and recognising their presence and their danger, so of driving them out of the hearts in His name, a name filled with the Father’s love for each and everyone. These spiritual illnesses, and therefore psychosomatic, will be healed when people will listen carefully to the announcement of the Father’s love!

The disciples will have to do only what the Lord is telling them: they will go only “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”. Their action is limited for now, but it will expand later.

First of all they will make sure they heal the people which already knows God, then Jesus will send them to the Pagans too, after He will have given His life for the world. Wherever they will go, Jesus’s disciples will preach the kingdom of God, so His love and the King’s presence, who is also Jesus. They will then offer the fruit of this love, which heals from sickness, gives life and frees from unclean spirits, so from the behaviours and impulses which prevent communion with God and men.

The disciples will know they are not someone’s savior themselves, because the only savior is and will always be only Jesus. He is the one who has come to donate us the Father’s love while we were still sinners, Saint Paul tells us.

When we were enemies, He has reconciled us with Himself. We take pride then in God and His Son, who elevates our life to a divine dignity and lets us cooperate with Him for the salvation of everyone in the world.