ME
NU

OMELIE / Omelie EN

20 mar 2022
20/03/2022 – 3rd Sunday of Lent - year C

20/03/2022 – 3rd Sunday of Lent - year C

Reading 1 EX 3, 1-8. 13-15 Paalm 102 Reading 2 1COR 10, 1-6. 10-12 Gospel LK 13, 1-9

Crime news do not frighten Jesus. He knows that many painful events happen in the world, many events frightening us and making us question our hearts. Often fear of death and so our sin create questions we answer by judging men or God Himself. Why that tragedy happened? Is it a punishment? Did they deserve it? How come that God is so unjust to let children suffer without fault? Why God does not stop bad and violent men’s hands?

These are questions and answers which foster new doubts, observations that do not give men peace. Pilate had some people killed while they were offering their sacrifices to God: who knows for which crimes God has punished them, if he has let them die in that way and in that moment! They were like Jesus, Galileans, heretics for the Jews. Jesus repeats the same observation for the eighteen people buried under the fallen tower, and they were not heretics, they were from Jerusalem. These questions come to us because we are used to look at the past, the only thing we think we know. God knows even what is hidden from us, even the future: Jesus knows this, and also He just gives an answer which is covering what is going to happen to us. We cannot judge others, we can just make sure we are not deserving the same judgement we are so ready to form regarding them.

If you do not repent, you will all perish as they did”.

For us too, if we continue to live as we are used to, as we like, following our impulses, death will come as a disgrace, a punishment. The death of those who have been killed and those who have been buried under the ruins is a warning for us. We are not judging their life, but we need to be careful regarding ours. “If you do not repent…”: we have the possibility to change, we can follow Him, Jesus, and then everything would change: life, including the moment of our death, would gain a new goal, a new meaning. By welcoming Jesus our life would bear fruit, would give God joy, would be collaboration with His plan of salvation for men who oppress and those who are oppressed. So Jesus continues to repeat us what He has said at the beginning of His preaching life: “Convert and believe the gospel”.

Today’s first reading is telling us about the calling of Moses through the voice coming out of the flaming bush. It lets us see the goal of Jesus' coming and presence: as Moses had to free the people from the suffering of slavery, so Jesus needs to free all of us from the suffering and the oppression of the sin which is engulfing humanity.

As Moses, who needed helpers, so Jesus does.

So we will be ready not only to welcome salvation, joy and a new life, but we put ourselves at the Lord’s service too. We are ready to answer His callings taking into account that it is He who knows what is good for us, who wants our blessing, who gives us fullness of life by making us part of His love and His loving. He calls us to fulfill His kingdom: will we be ready to live by the rules of this new kingdom, where He is king?

Everything God has done in the history of His people has the meaning to reveal us who Jesus is. In this way we need to read the events of the past: the cloud, the sea, the manna, the rock from which poured the water, are all signs we can understand only in the light of the life of the dead and risen Lord. We are always weak and in need of Him: therefore we should stay close to Him, or we might fall into nothingness. “Whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall”, the apostle is warning us.

We will be standing, so living in the faith, and our trust in the Father will be a source of life and joy for many. Jesus has also added a parable to help us. A fig tree has been producing only leaves for three years. It would need to be cut down, but the servant is still seeing a possibility. You can always try to dig around it and feed it, who knows! It is easy to understand: the three years of the Son of God’s presence have not been enough for many. Maybe, by adding the effort of the Church and her testimony, so extra time of committed love, the world will convert! They who are looking for their satisfaction among the leaves of many useless things, will find their nourishment, will find the fruit that our conversion to Jesus has borne.