OMELIE / Omelie EN

10 mar 2024

10/03/2024 - 4th Sunday of Lent - B

10/03/2024 - 4th Sunday of Lent - B

Reading 1 2CHR 36,14-16.19-23 Psalm 136 Reading 2 EPH 2,4-10 Gospel JN 3,14-21

It seems like that the beginning of the first reading might have been written for our times. Today too among Christians, in fact, there is the strong temptation to conform to the habits of the people without faith, who refuse to accept Jesus Christ, and even who openly despise God’s commandments. I am not only referring to those fashions regarding the way to dress which highlight specific parts of the body, even at the risk of arising in others sensual thoughts and desires, but above all I am referring to the way of thinking around human life, its beginning and its end, and living together as a family outside every divine regulation, so without the century-long and eternal wisdom which makes it serene and joyful.

“The anger of the Lord against his people was so inflamed that there was no remedy”. The people without rules becomes easily pray of other peoples without scruples, who, despite their ignorance of religious things, in some regards they sometimes obey God better than the very people of God. So the people if Israel has weakened so much, because of its sins, to end up in the hands of another people which has taken it far away and enslaved it for seventy years. So it has realised how weak it was, suffering deeply for this, until it resolved to turn its heart to the God of peace and life from whom it had strayed. In fact God is always ready to take back they who have left Him, nay, He is the one longing for their return. Unfortunately, they who leave, both as a single person or as a whole people, are met by painful consequences, which scar them and make them suffer for a long time.

The Gospel is reminding us of another episode of the Bible important to this effect: those who, during the 40-year journey in the desert, complained about God, ended up bitten by poisonous snakes and died. Sin, the rebellion against God, causes other creatures to rebel against men.

It is still God, the Father, always faithful to men, His creature, to intervene to give them a chance of redemption: those who look at the copper snake, on top of Moses’ staff, are healed.

Jesus Himself sees in this event a prophecy: the suffering man destroyed by his sin does not have to despair, because God’s love has thought about this very situation and has sent His only Son to bring salvation. He has been raised on the cross “so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life”.

We are preparing ourselves to renew, during Easter Vigil Mass, the decision to live immersed in Jesus, in His death and resurrection: it is friendship with Him to save us from sin, and to alleviate slowly our sufferings and the sufferings our sin has brought in the world.

Jesus is the light which we, by doing evil, have rejected. Now we have and we want to recover the time and the energies wasted, and give the Lord a chance to heal our wounds with the mercy the Father has plenty of, as Saint Paul tells us.

We believe in the Son of God to enjoy the salvation and to go back to do the “good works” already prepared by God for our journey in this world. Good works will be observing first of all the commandments, then generosity towards our brethren.

To them we will not refuse material help, which they might need, but above all we will not let them down regarding the spiritual help of our prayers, of our listening to the Word of God, of our testimony. Of the latter there is always need, to support the faith of the people who are faltering.