OMELIE / Omelie EN

27 lug 2025

27/07/2025 - 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C

27/07/2025 - 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C

First reading: Genesis 18:20-21, 23-32 Psalm 137 Second reading: Colossians 2:12-14 Gospel: Luke 11:1-13

The passage from the book of Genesis recording Abraham's dialogue with God is one of the most beautiful in the Old Testament. Abraham shows confidence and courage in speaking with God, making merciful proposals to him: we are very much like him when we think we are capable of giving advice to God. Even without saying so explicitly, we tend to consider ourselves better and wiser than him.

Abraham thought he had to give God suggestions and tell him how far his patience and love should go. God allows himself to be advised, accepts the man's suggestions, but far exceeds Abraham's mercifulness. It is buffling! At a certain point, the man stops, unable to imagine that there could be patience and mercy greater than his own. Instead, God reveals himself to be a true and generous person who loves the man. God is willing to spare the life of an entire people thanks to the faithfulness of ten people, but he certainly has even more far-reaching plan and opportunity, which Abraham cannot yet understand.

We know this: he will send a single man, a man without sin, who will offer his life not only for a city, but for the whole world. It is Jesus, and St Paul speaks about him today.

There is no one righteous on earth; we are all sinners. He has forgiven all our sins: those who accept him become righteous in the eyes of God. Thanks to him, therefore, there are many righteous people in the world, in every city and town, and thanks to him, God spares the world.

We see with increasing clarity how guilty the world is, how disobedient it is to God, how great its sins are, how similar our nations are to the city of Sodom, ravaged by sexual perversions. Let us not become sad or discouraged: God's love is always ready, always tangible in Jesus and in his Church, which continually carries the cross with him to ensure salvation for every single person marked by the consequences of sin.

Certainly, it will still be necessary for the man to offer his prayer to God, as Abraham did. But the prayer that the man now offers is no longer the one he comes up with his intelligence and his desires, often moved by the interests of the moment. We offer to the Father the prayer of Jesus, the one that he himself puts in our hearts and on our lips. With this prayer, we do not promise to succeed in bending God's heart, but instead to change our own.

The disciples prayed like all good Jews. However, seeing Jesus pray, they realised that his prayer was different, and they asked him to teach them too. Jesus then reveals his own way of coming before God.

He prays as a son, like an obedient child who enjoys the greatness and wisdom of his father. Jesus is interested in the desires and the will of the Father, in everything that matters to him, and he makes his own the plan that the Father has in mind for the life and joy of every person and the whole world. He asks the Father for bread, the bread that makes us one heart and one soul, the Eucharistic bread that brings the Holy Spirit into us.

Jesus also asks for forgiveness for us, knowing that we need to be healed. And he asks for strength to resist temptations: they are all around us and overwhelm us. The worst temptations are those that isolate us, alienate us from the community, make us disobey God and not seek to obey his ministers: thus division reigns, a climate favourable to the enemy of men and God.

God is a Father who loves us and does not refuse to give us what is necessary for our life. He does not refuse us his Holy Spirit, who gives life and communion for the deep joy and peace of his children. It is this Spirit who teaches us to ask insistently, as a friend asks insistently of a friend for bread for a third friend. Friendship is built on sharing bread: is this not true? Even friendship with God is built on bread, the bread that Jesus himself becomes, to unite us, save us, and sanctify us.

In fact, “you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, and even when you were dead in transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he brought you to life along with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions”. Thanks to Jesus, who became bread, obtained through our incessant and insistent prayer, sin and evil are removed from us.