OMELIE / Omelie EN

26 set 2021

26/09/2021 – 26th Sunday in O.T. - year B

26/09/2021 – 26^th Sunday in O.T. - year B

Reading 1 NM 11,25-29 Psalm 18/19 Reading 2 JAS 5,1-6 Gospel MK 9,38-43.45.47-48

“Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets!” This is how Moses answers the young man, worried because two men were “prophesying”, they were announcing the Word of God, even if they did not have received the official task to do so. They were doing it bravely and for the love of the God who asks always for conversion and repentance, they were doing so thanks to the graces of the Holy Spirit of God who had entered them. The temptation of jealousy was taking its spot in Joshua’s heart. Moses made him aware of it, and said that it would have been great if everyone had been God’s prophets. God Himself would be glorified by it.

Similar to this is Jesus’ teaching to His disciple John: the latter had prohibited to a man to use His name in order to banish demons. He had prohibited it for the sole reason that he was not part of the group of the disciples. If only everyone was calling out Jesus’ name! The “miracles” would be so many more and the kingdom of God would show itself with strength! The Lord Himself wants him to understand that whoever refers to Him with respect is doing a divine work, and cooperates in this way with the Father’s love. And whoever love Jesus' disciples and help them, are fulfilling the Father’s love and they will receive a proportional reward. Whoever call out lovingly Jesus' name is a true prophet, they are people who are sowing in the world God’s love. In them will grow the communion with the Son of God and their knowledge. Instead, – and at this point Jesus is not very understanding – bad things will befall whoever scandalise others or let themselves be scandalised! A scandal is every obstacle on the path to the faith in Him, every attempt to distract from listening to the Gospel, every thought, action or gesture which convince someone to stay away from Him.

It would be better to die rather than preventing someone to get closer to Jesus, the only saviour. To prevent or obstacle the salvation of a person is the most serious sin. Those who are at risk of being scandalised are the little ones, the people less gifted with intelligence and will, people that are mentally fragile. But we need to pay attention too: in fact, both our hand or foot, or even our eye could become an obstacle to remain united to Jesus.

What did Jesus mean with hand, foot, eye? In case our hand, so our job o our worries, in case our foot, so the places we go to and our journeys, in case our eyes, so things we try to see o the books we look for, were distracting us from listening and obeying Jesus, they would be scandal: we should avoid all the above at all costs. Jesus is telling us this in a very graphic way: we should cut hand and foot off, and gauge the eye out. Why? Because nothing is more precious than Him. Nothing can take the Lord’s place in our life. Better to be regarded as fools, outdated, ignorant, old-fashioned, clueless, better to be alone, than being away from Him. Better to remain poor, rather than putting distance between our heart and the richness of our faith in Him.

Wealth, Saint James is telling us with strong words and images, has the tendency to lead us into many bad behaviours. It would be enough to look around us, and we would see right away that we and our Church are mocked above all by the rich: do we want to be among them? If we were a little clever, we would give up the desire for wealth, which is always cheating us. This desire would make us even be unfair towards those who work for us or serve us. Our most desired treasure will have to be only the Lord. Then our life and our behaviour will become a continuous prophecy, a happy message of communion and hope, an announcement of the Father’s love for all the little and the poor.

How beautiful it is to live knowing that in every moment our life can become a calling and a point of reference to the Father’s love, a little light which lets us see Jesus! Being prophets or witnesses, will become the main criteria of our choices and actions. When I need to decide what to do, I will hung on to this principle: I will do what is more likely to announce the Father’s mercy, what is showing more Jesus' teaching, what is «telling» about the strong and wise love of God.