OMELIE / Omelie EN

10 ott 2021

10/10/2021 – 28th Sunday in O. T. - year B

10/10/2021 – 28^th Sunday in O. T. - year B

Reading 1 WIS 7,7-11 Psalm 89/90 Reading 2 HEB 4,12-13 Gospel MK 10,17-30

The book of wisdom is praising prudence and wisdom, gifts of God’s preferable not only to material wealth, but also to health and beauty. These are gifts, not conquests or the result of our efforts: gifts we can receive from God and therefore we can ask God for. These gifts are really great: in fact, when we consider them the foundation of our life and our going about life, we ourselves become a blessing from God to many, for those we love, for those we meet and for the whole society. All our desire needs to be turned to wisdom and prudence, and above all we need to ask God for these. Prudence and wisdom are the foundation of every form of life: those who live in a family, who live in solitude, who need to be always around people for work, need wisdom to give things and words the correct value, the correct value to events and projects, and they need prudence in order to jump in at the right moment both with words and actions. Those who speak and act with wisdom and prudence give out consolation and direction, serenity and good inspiration, faith in God and certainty.

Jesus has appeared to everyone as a wise and prudent man. This is why, the “man”, when Jesus was about to leave Jericho, “ran up” and asked Him the most important question of his life. Who we can ask about what we need to do to have life, if not a wise and prudent man? He will not give random advice, and neither will he try to manipulate anyone in order to serve his interests.

The man who wanted to know “what must I do to inherit eternal life” had realised that his life, which was complete regarding earthly things in the world, was still missing everything. He was not happy, he could not see a direction for his deepest desires, nor he was satisfied by all the religious practices.

How is Jesus using His wisdom and prudence in this case?

First of all, He talks to the man about God. He is the only good one, from Him life comes and eternal life. You need to be concentrating on Him alone, ask Him for and receive from Him advice. Since then God’s advice is definitely the best, you need to welcome it with the firm intention of putting it into practice. We can approach God gradually. First of all, are you obeying His commandments, those He gave all people? If you do not do that, how can you look for fullness of life from Him? Great thing: the man was already obeying all the commandments of God given to Moses.

Then, after you have obeyed the commandments, you can look for the person God, the Good, has sent as His messenger, as His Son.

Then you will realise that you will not need to do anything else, nothing but loving Him and live with Him and for Him. Do you want to love Him truly? Do not share your love between Him and other things, not even the most beautiful ones. Sell everything, Jesus says. Do not try to have rights on this earth, and so give to the poor, who will not be able to give anything back. And God’s gift, His Son, will occupy your whole life. This is wisdom, this is the prudence most holy and lasting, because they bring you fullness of joy now, and in future eternal beatitude, and also they make your life even more useful to the whole world.

The man who desired life now is leaving all sad: he was not able to choose Jesus instead of his earthly wealth. The latter was filling completely his heart and was ruling him.

Once alone, Jesus is taking advantage of the situation to tell His disciples that for rich people is very difficult to enter the kingdom of heaven: in fact, it is not possible to serve two different masters. You need to disregard one in order to choose the other. However, Jesus is reassuring the disciples too, by saying that, even if this is impossible to the men, they can ask God for it, and He can give us a undivided love for Him, the Son of God.

This will be our daily prayer, that it may be given us to be able to put wealth in second place in order to be with Jesus. We will listen to his Word, which becomes strength and will in our hearts and minds, because it is living and effective.