OMELIE / Omelie EN

16 set 2018

16/09/2018   24rt Sunday in O. T. - B 

16/09/2018   24^rt Sunday in O. T. - B 

Reading 1, IS 50,5-9 * Psalm 114 * Reading 2, JAS 2,14-18 * Gospel, MK 8,27-35

The Apostle James’ words are always valid and necessary. Faith needs to become concrete, needs to become visible, otherwise it is a useless toy or a fooling knick-knack: you think you have it, but it does not bear any fruit. What makes visible our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ are charitable works. St James calls them “works”: “I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works”! Whoever says that he has faith, but he doesn’t do anything to make it visible, instead of faithful is delusional. For these reasons Saint Paul says that faith is obedience. Whoever believes, in fact, obeys the Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles of His Church, and therefore he begins to serve, to love His neighbor to the cost to renounce himself. To renounce himself does not bother whoever believes, because he can see his own Lord on the cross and he loves Him while He dies on the cross.

Today’s gospel shows us exactly true faith with its consequences and the fruits of a love that is able to offer itself up. True faith in Jesus is not based on feelings or devotions, but on live knowledge of His person. Today we hear Him posing to His disciples a question that at first sight could seems a curiosity: “Who do people say that I am?”. The answers that they report Him are unbelievable, they seem beautiful, but they are not enough. People say that Jesus is one who has risen from the dead, therefore an extraordinary person: a person however that is already known, even if He died and then come back to life. As a matter of fact, the people could think that, if Jesus is Elijah come back to life, we already know everything about Elijah and therefore we do not have anything new to learn, and, above all, anything to change in our behavior.

“But who do you say that I am?” Jesus keeps asking. To answer this question is more difficult, so much so that only Peter answers. Even if he gives a different answer from the one given by the crowd, this is a «true» answer, not even he knows the meaning of what he says: “You are the Christ”. This sentence is at the very basis of the faith, of true faith, but only when it is understood in the right way, according to the right knowledge of the word of God. This sentence is understood when we know what to say it brings, what to be a disciple of the one who is “the Christ” brings.

To be the Christ means to be the one the prophets say that must “suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days”. In the first reading Isaiah reveals us something of this mystery: “I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting”. To believe that Jesus is the Christ means therefore to “take up his cross” and follow Him, without fear of “losing his life”, being held in contempt and ignored exactly by those people who count.

Peter shows that he did not understand at all the meaning of his own answer : in fact he even stands in front of Jesus to rebuke Him because of His words based on the Sacred Scriptures. Peter’s dream is to be able to live comfortably, surrounded by human glory, satisfied with ambition and desire of grandeur. He believes that Jesus is indeed the Christ, but with those characteristics dreamed of by proud and boastful men. Those are the conditions underlined by Satan, Jesus answers. And without fear He asks Peter to go back behind Him, at His place of disciple in order to learn and not to place himself in front of Him to teach. It is Satan who searches for the glory of men, while the Christ looks for obedience to the Scriptures, the obedience of faith in God’s plans. God’s plan is to save men through the Son’s cross.

I have truly faith, and my faith is not a toy or a knick-knack, when I accept that Jesus saves the world with His cross, and therefore when I offer myself to cooperate, I offer myself to suffer with Him for the sin of the world.

This is why James is pushing us firmly to show faith through our works, with the works of obedience to the Lord’s love: to be attentive to the necessities of the poor, to be ready to serve them, to be ready to offer ourselves with sacrifice in order to let God’s mercy become true. All of this Jesus’ disciple does for the love of His Lord, in order for everybody to get to know the true meaning of Him being “the Christ”! The disciple becomes in this way witness of the true God, who loves men, who wants to save them from the satanic illusion of living thinking of themselves alone, ready to disobey the Father’s wisdom made clear by Jesus. We can defend ourselves from this mischief by following the invitation to live obeying the faith in Jesus, who dies in order for the Father’s love for us sinners to become true.