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OMELIE / Omelie EN

26/6/2016
16/10/2016 - 29th Sunday of O.T. - C

16/10/2016 - 29th Sunday of O.T. - C 

1ª reading Ezech 17,8-13 * from Psalm 120 * 2ª reading 2Tim 3,14 - 4, 2 * Gospel Lk 18,1-8


The hands of Moses! Only the hand of Moses were important when they remained up. Why his arms only? The enemy lost the battle when Moses kept arms upwards, and the people with Joshua won. It is a surprising mystery, which tells us of the absolute importance for the Church to pray. If in the Church the people who are put at the head do not keep their arms held high, all the Church goes backwards. For this reason the apostles decided to give to the seven deacons the service to do material charity to the poor, in order to be able to dedicate their time to the ministry of the Word and to prayer.

“Tomorrow I will stand standing on the top of the hill, with a rod of God in my hand”: this is the way with which Moses and his first helpers collaborate to the battle against the enemies. There are those who must battle but this will eventually be useless energy if it were not for for the energy coming from prayer. Even praying is difficult: infact Moses has to sit down, and his arms has to be sustained from both sides by his collaborators: “If the Lord does not build the house, in vane the constructors work. If the Lord does not vigilate on the city, it is useless for the watchman to vigilate”. God makes miracles using our strength and toils, but the miracles are done by Him. Do we remember this? Do you work all day without stopping to pray? You go to the doctor for your won maladies, enter in important offices because they are important for your own work and for the life of the family, you spend alot of money for your business economy, you go to the accountant, do the notary, to the lawyer, go to look for work, to the scholastic meetings of you children? Have you stopped to present everything to the father who is in heaven? Have you lifted your arms and your eyes towards Him? If he does not intervene, your efforts will be useless

You have ever put up your arms and your eyes towards him? If he does not intervene, your fatigue and work is useless. The teaching of Jesus continues that which we have received from the example of Moses. It is necessary “to pray always without getting tired”. It is necessary! We cannot do without prayer, otherwise all our life will suffer, all our work will go down the drain. Jesus insists on this teaching narrating the parable of the widow who insisted. Truly, from this teaching we will understand also that God is one who tells you to “Yes”. God is Father, who knows and loves your life, loves you and knows the secret of your happiness and the utility of your own life. He knows that it is important for us to be always united to him, and thus he wants us to make us used to be oriented towards him, and for this “he gives the impression” that he does not hear our prayer. At times, though, with the passing of time, our prayers become perfected, because the factors also change. Prayer must always be full of trust: God knows more than us if and how to truly hear our prayers. For this reason he knows how to attend, thus he sees also if our prayer is truly based on trust. There is infact those who get tired to be oriented to the Father and to attend with patience his intervention and they seeks magicians, that is the devil, to obtain that which they deem it is indispensable. If the Father would have heard them instantly, he would have heard someone who is not attendable, capable to deny him!

Jesus concludes the parable saying that God is certainly better than the dishonest and egoist judge. One must only have faith, to attend with joy that your prayer is heard, with joy because you are certain of his goodness. Attending is never long, because all the time is at the hands of God, your Father. What impresses us then is the interrogative question with which Jesus ends and which make us understand what is important. “But the son of man, when he returns, will find faith on earth?” The Son of man will come certainly, and he will complete the fullness of our life. The most important thing for us, more important of all the prayers that we address to the Father, is to be always ready to welcome the Son, ready to show the faith, that is our adhesion to him. This question corrects many of our prayers, corrects our ways of thinking and desiring. And a the Son is the necessity which is most urgent. Without Him, who are we? Without Him, to what does it serve all that we dream of ?

We must thus orient our prayer to Jesus: and thus, helped also by the exhortation of the apostle saint Paul, let us concentrate on the Word of God so that it arrives to the ears of all men. The Word of God is the most important richness for every man, thus the most important gift that we can do to everyone, to whom has started to believe and to those who do not have the awareness of the love of the Father and Jesus. The Holy Scriptures are indispensable for us, but also for the others. Today, the Word Day for Missionaries, we will make the promise to go deeper in our awareness of Scriptures and to sustain in this those who love and those who we see in need. This is a greater and urgent task than the collecting of money for the poor and for the missionaries. To what does the money serve if it does not arrive to the Kingdom of God? Does it continue to serve for the Kingdom of Satan? Thus first it is faith, and the prayer that manifests it and that which makes it bear fruit.