OMELIE / Omelie EN

28 giu 2020

28/06/2020 – 13th Sunday in O. T.  - year A

28/06/2020 – 13^th Sunday in O. T.  - year A

Reading 1 2KG 4,8-11.14-16° Psalm 88/89 Reading 2 ROM 6,3-4.8-11 Gospel MT 10,37-42

God's Word today is telling us about reward. God does not stop in asking for our obedience, because His heart is tender and sensitive, it is the heart of a loving Father. He likes to reward, award, encourage, make His children happy. Both Elisha and Jesus are talking about this, but Saint Paul as well is reminding us of and making us enjoy our baptism as a step towards the glory of that God who rewards the effort we make to unite ourselves to Jesus who suffers and dies. We take part in His death when we are dead to sin, so give up everything which would give pleasure to our body and our passions, but it would separate us from the Father’s love. Be dead to ourselves, we often say in an expression very used by the same Saints. The baptism is about welcoming the idea of being like dead to ourselves, so living a different life, a life which has its origin in God, the God, however, who is father! And this life has as occupation to obey God's Word, and has as only goal still to reach God, and, again, that God we know as our Father. We will live with Him, as Saint Paul says. We will receive as reward the grace of full communion with Jesus, the only Son.

The prophet Elisha has prepared us to know God as a person able to reciprocate. The generosity of the woman, who, for love of God, was hosting the prophet, preparing him a room in which he could rest during his travelling, needs to be rewarded! For her Elisha promises God's thankfulness, and he obtains for her a son, so much longed for, who she was at a loss to be able to have anymore, a son who gives new meaning and value to her existence as a woman: the son enables her to love and makes her feeling loved by the God of life.

And Jesus continues to talk to us about the Father’s reward to all those who love Him as the Son of God! There are different ways to love Him and to show love to Him. He is not visible anymore, therefore nobody can meet Him on the roads of the world, but everybody can meet and benefit some of His disciples. Are you doing something loving for one of the Lord’s disciples? He Himself will know that you love Him and will give you the reward! Do you offer them even only a glass of water? You will receive the reward for all the good things that the disciple does while obeying his Lord!

Jesus is truly the Son of God, therefore He needs to be regarded as coming before everyone and everything. He is the Son of God, therefore He needs to be the centre of attraction of every attention of ours and the core from which comes every decision and action of ours. Do you love someone else more than Him? This would mean that you think there is someone greater or more lovable than God. The woman from Shunem is an example for us: she has offered to the prophet her house and, considering the need for him to concentrate, she was always ready to serve him joyfully. This is how the Christian needs to behave towards the Lord Jesus.

When you say “it is better to obey God than men” you say that in our loving too there is a hierarchy to be followed, a hierarchy for our good deeds. Today we are told that Jesus, the Son of God, is to be preferred to anyone else. Our life becomes perfect by loving Him, and therefore our love too for parents and children, for siblings and friends gets more perfect when we love Jesus more than anyone else, when we prefer Him to anyone else. It is God Himself that commands us to love the father and the mother, our children and every other person. All the love towards men however needs to come after the love towards God. If you love me because I am lovable, or because you want to be nice to me, I feels this love as something that is obliging me. If instead you love me because you love Jesus, and because of Him you are ready to disapprove some wish or some behaviour or work of mine, I can feel your truest love, free, a love that lives me free from you and your presence.

Jesus' love costs Him, because He had to carry the cross. Loving Jesus costs, because the rejection that has surrounded Him will surround us too. However, loving Jesus is life, true life, which right away satisfies every human aspiration! And in addition, whoever love Jesus can expect an eternal reward!