OMELIE / Omelie EN

05 nov 2023

05/11/2023 – 31st Sunday in O. T. – Year A

05/11/2023 – 31^st Sunday in O. T. – Year A

Reading l MAL 1,14 – 2,2.8-10 Psalm130 Reading 2 1THES 2,7-9.13 Gospel MT 23,1-12

“If you do not listen, if you do not lay it to heart to give glory to my name …”. Someone might be tempted to think these words are not worthy of God; they might think they are showing arrogance or they are threatening. But what does «give glory to God’s name» mean?

People who know the bible know that God receives glory from the man who obeys Him; people obeying God love the poor, the orphan and the widow, cultivate justice, love and peace, follow the commandments, which require great and generous respect for the neighbour. To give glory to God’s name is about showing, with our life and the life of our family and society, that God is love, is mercy, wants communion and involvement, is a friend for the man. Whoever do not live this reality cannot say they belong to God’s people: they would give false testimony about Him, they would make Him known as unjust, violent, selfish. If you know you have been created by the Only God who has created all men, why then break faith with one another? God wants to make clear the seriousness of the situation of those who ignore the love for the neighbour by saying: “I will send a curse upon you…”. This is a strong and incisive expression. Nobody will be able to persist in their error after hearing such a sentence.

God’s admonition given through the prophet Malachi is addressed above all to those responsible for the people, the priests. Their life is particularly looked at by the poor, looking for a concrete example of a behaviour pleasing to God.

Jesus, in today’s passage from the Gospel, continues down the prophetic line by warning people about the behaviour of those who should teach God’s wisdom. These were the Scribes and the Pharisees. On paper they were teaching well, but with their life they were showing something else. So the Lord said: “Do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example…”. Today many people’s thought goes to the bishops and the priests: they are those who teach God’s ways, they are those who, being men, sometimes do not give the right example, do not live according to the Gospel. It is true: they are too and they will always be weak men, fragile, tempted by the devil. You will not be surprised to find in the life of some of them too some weaknesses, disobedience, discrepancies with what they are rightly teaching.

Jesus’s word though is addressed to you: you will live according to the teaching of the Gospel, even if the priest who announces it is not able to do so yet. His words have divine authority. You will live in tune with God’s holy words, and you yourself will be a light, a star which accompanies with your example other people too to the true source of life.

Jesus teaches the disciples the way of humility, the only way which keeps the man stably in God’s heart. Do not think you are more than others. Do not ask for titles, do not look for the ways of grandeur. Jesus is not prohibiting that you call “father” a person who has given or is giving you the divine and eternal life: He is suggesting you should not look for glory in a title. I would like to be always called by the name I was given with the Baptism, but if someone talks to me calling me “father” I do not prevent him from doing so: he might need it for keeping alive the perception of his obedience and humility towards the Heavenly Father.

Jesus’s words are highlighted by Saint Paul’s example. He writes tenderly and with affection to the Thessalonians remembering his own work among them. He has loved them by telling them about the Gospel, has laboured and has been loving with them, making himself into an example of Christian life.

Paul’s words could be repeated by many parish priests and bishops, who are still an example with their life according to the Gospel too. Many are the priests who have taken seriously Jesus’s words and they do not have overlooked them. And are also many the faithful who, like the Thessalonians, have welcomed and are still welcoming their word “not a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God”.

The Church of God is beautiful, a people which lives the wisdom of the Father and gives Him glory.