OMELIE / Omelie EN

04 nov 2018

04/11/2018 – 31st Sunday in O. T. - B 

04/11/2018 – 31^st Sunday in O. T. - B 

Reading 1 DT 6,2-6 Psalm 17/18 Reading 2 HEB 7,23-28 Gospel MK 12,28-34 

Hear then, Israel! In today's readings we can find this piece of advice many times! God's people, and also Jesus' disciples, need to get used to listen! It is through our listening that God comes in our life and in our history. Our listening it is the way in which He can show Himself to us, the way in which He can transform us! God's Word we listen to purifies us (“You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you”) and transforms us. It is the true seed that, hidden in our heart, grows and bears fruit!

The Word sown today it is indeed the main one in the entire Bible: "You shall love"!

Why is it the main one?

Because it is the very life of God!

When someone loves, lives God's life. When I love, I am one with God! When I love, I am inside the Father's heart, I have reached the goal, I am perfect and I make the world in which I live perfect!

"You shall love"!

Who should we love? First of all, the source of our life, the one who loved us first and wanted and blessed us. Then we will love all those He Himself loves. If we did not love those He loves, He Himself would feel mocked by us!

What is love made of? How will we love our brothers and all men? We will love them by giving them what makes our life beautiful and invaluable, giving them our life! The most beautiful life we can possibly live, it is the one with God, the one that is dedicated to Him, that imitates Him to the point to become one thing with Him!

The most truthful love for men then is shown by giving them knowledge of the Father and of His wisdom. We love men when we truly love our Father! They can see us, then, as children, and, seeing us like that, they themselves can feel loved, and, on their turn, they will meet the Father.

We love the Father not when we pay lip service to Him, but when we welcome the One He is sending us, Jesus, and when we do what He does: that is to say, we ourselves take part in giving Jesus to men. It is in this way that we love His children and His creatures!

Let us give thanks that we are already on the way of love; let us thank Jesus because he guided us on it and let us keep asking in prayer the grace to keep walking and growing to His level! To be true children in order to be able to bring around in us the talent for love of the Father!

The recommendation to love God our Lord it is the one Moses gave to the people. He advises it as the way to reach happiness: in fact, he says: "Fear the Lord, your God, and keep … all his statutes and commandments … and thus have long life" and then “be careful to observe them, that you may grow and prosper the more” in “a land flowing with milk and honey”. God wants our happiness, even more, He Himself is our happiness. This is why we desire to be one with Him! How can we achieve this?

We will follow the example of, nay, we will unite ourselves to, the Son that is "high priest", always in contact with the Father, always beloved by Him. He does not operate by offering sacrifices of animals, like the priests of the old covenant, but He offers Himself as sacrifice once and for all. He offers Himself for us, for our sins, because He is "holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, higher than the heavens". He offers Himself for us, offers His human life as a sacrifice that God accepts once and for all: who offers himself, in fact, lives the Father's life. He loves the Father by fulfilling everything that is written about God's servant, fulfilling the prophecies. This is His love. It is a true love, welcomed by the Father as love, welcomed by us as immense love freeing us from the duty to «free us by ourselves», that is an impossible and unbelievable task. Together with Him we will be able to love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength. We will obey Him when He will suggest us to welcome the wounded brother, to take care of the weak ones or the sick, to pay attention to the little ones, to whom is delicate or inane, that is to say our neighbour. Our life will be a continuous and constant development of that "You shall love", that is being repeated to us and is being learned by us with humility, without ever being able to say: I have reached the goal now, I do not need to do anything else.