OMELIE / Omelie EN

31 gen 2021

31/01/2021 – 4th Sunday in O. T.  - year B 

31/01/2021 – 4th Sunday in O. T.  - year B 

Reading 1 DT 18,15-20 Psalm 94/95 Reading 2 1COR 7,32-35 Gospel MK 1,21-28

The people of Israel had fear of the presence of God and His voice, just like Adam after his sin. So the book of Deuteronomy is saying. God though, in His fatherly love, does not give up communicating with the people and chooses another way, the one we now know well too: “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kin, and will put my words into his mouth; he shall tell them all that I command him”. And behold, Jesus among us, who is giving us the Word of God, is telling us about the Father’s plans, His proposals, and is showing us His ways. “To him you shall listen”, Moses said, and God Himself, on the mountain of the transfiguration repeated firmly to the three disciples: “Listen to Him”.

Today, reading from the first page of the Gospel according to Mark, we can see Jesus who for the first time was “teaching”: He did it on a Saturday, in the synagogue of Capernaum. The evangelist is noting twice the wonder of those gathered there “for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes”. Jesus had received authority from God, His very authority. It is the authority of the one who loves, who opens his mouth and lives to love. It is love in fact that let the man grow, matures him, heals him from the wounds of the selfish acts that have been happening around him since he was young. The truth and the beauty of this authority can be seen by everyone, and we too can see that Jesus' word is matching what our heart desires and our life is expecting. Jesus says what is good for us, what makes us grow to reach full maturity, what establishes a deep communion with God Himself, but also with the other men, the ones in the family and the society we live in. Jesus’s word is a Word that also reveals the harmonic relationship between us and the things in the world around us, to the point of making this things into tools God makes us of in order for us to understand even easier His desires or His revelations.

“He taught them as one having authority”. This authority is felt even by the demons, and the event told today is giving us an example of this. The devil can even possess the body and the heart of the person who sits with the others to pray in a holy place, but he cannot bear Jesus' word. He, before showing himself as an enemy for the man is showing himself as an enemy of Jesus, to the point he slanders Him in front of everyone. He knows that Jesus is “the Holy One of God”, but he accuses Him of destructive intentions: “Have you come to destroy us?”. He is in this way revealing himself as a schizophrenic, contradicting himself. The Lord’s orders is compelling him to reveal himself as he really is, so the one who ravages and makes men suffer terribly. We can also see who Jesus really is, the carrier of God’s authority, so of His love which wins over every power that an enemy of the man. So we are helped in giving Him importance, listening to Him, avoiding all temptations that would like to prevent us from looking for and welcoming his Word: these temptations are always coming from our and His adversary.

The apostle Paul is telling us which is the extreme point a Christian might reach in order to give importance to Jesus' word. It is not everyone’s path, but it is always a possible way: you can even give up human love in order to fully take in the Lord’s love, you can choose not to get married in order to take care of what “may please the Lord”.

Jesus' authority however needs always to involve us, not only with its wonder, but also through a trustful and loving obedience. IfHis word is showing us his divine authority, I want to listen to Him and I want to live according to His instructions, even if this is going to cost me, as you might say, going against the tide: it is against the world’s tide, but not against the tide of the fulfillment of our life and of our true joy.