OMELIE / Omelie EN

28 apr 2024

28/04/2024 - 5th Sunday of Easter - B

28/04/2024 - 5^th Sunday of Easter - B

Reading 1 ACTS 9,26-31 Psalm 21 Reading 2 1JN 3,18-24 Gospel JN 15,1-8

The first reading is telling us about the return of Saul to Jerusalem after he had met Jesus, who has blinded him and has conquered his heart. He has been baptised in Damascus by that community, and now he comes to meet as a Christian those Christians he used to persecute to death.

What could the young convert possibly expect by going to the apostles and the other believers! Maybe a hand? Instead He only found suspicion. Barnabas had to intervene, with all his authority of a wise and pius man: he had already met Him in Damascus and he had enjoyed his change of heart.

Once overcome this difficulty, in the Holy City Saul found a new challenge: the Jews, to whom he was able to announce his faith in the name of Jesus, were trying to kill him, so much so that the community of the new believers had to send him back to the city he was born in, Tarsus. So they ensured he was safe, and then they forgot all about him. He was able to experience in this way some serious pruning!

Through this experience of his, he understood the words Jesus had given to His disciples during the Last Supper. In that occasion the Lord had spoken about the Father by drawing a similarity between him and the farmer who approaches the vines with a pair of scissors and, without pity, he cuts the dry branches and he prunes them. The young Saul must have felt like a vine suffering hard the pruning!

The farmer knows that the fruit of the vine will be better and more flavoursome after this pruning, and so also the spiritual fruit of the believer’s life will be more useful for the Kingdom of God after they will have let themselves to be “worked on” by the Father.

Every believer experiences one or more pruning, which can happen through providential circumstances: sickness, events which prevent from achieving what they would like, from following their dream in the professional or family life, obstacles or delays of different nature. The believer knows that these tests, which make them suffer and train them to be patient, are known to the Father and are guided by His providential love which can see further ahead than our intelligence and our desire. In every case the believer, or, better, we, will try to remain in peace, untroubled and trusty. We know, as Saint Paul says, “that all things work together for good for those who love God” (ROM 8,28).

We remain united to the Son of God, to Jesus, tightly hanging onto Him, who has carried a cross that, instead of preventing Him from saving us, has allowed Him to fully obtain salvation for all men. United to Him, even in the suffering caused by the nuisances and the heaviest prunings, our life will bear fruit, a ripe fruit, pleasing to God and useful for men. They who remain united to Jesus, despite the fact that sometimes they might not achieve anything appreciated by the world, their presence, mysteriously, will be of great use for many.

The apostle who felt especially loved by Jesus, John, is inviting us to cultivate one of the fruit which cannot be lacking in those who are united to the Lord: love. Love needs to be lived with all our strength, in words and in actions. And the actions which stem from love are reassuring us they are truthful, they are proof we are in God and God is in us. Today then the Lord is illuminating our path: the tests and the crosses are not and we cannot consider penances, but signs of the Father’s love, who is shaping us so we too become able to love like He does! We will experience then that, after being united to Jesus in dying on the cross, we will be united to Him also in the joy of resurrection.