OMELIE / Omelie EN

18 set 2022

18/09/2022 – 25th Sunday in O. T. – year C

18/09/2022 – 25^th Sunday in O. T. – year C

Reading 1 AM 8,4-7 Psalm 112 Reading 2 1TM 2,1-8 Gospel LK 16,1-13

Saint Paul insists with his faithful disciple Timothy on the fact that Christians need to pray. They are invited to pray “in every place” by means of “supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings”. They will pray first and foremost “for kings and for all in authority”, because they have the power to establish peace and serenity for peoples, and also to give the possibility to the believers to lead a quiet life and continue their service of announcing the gospel to the world.

This is what the world needs, because when the gospel arrives men can start a journey towards true peace, solidarity, communion, care for one another, and also fair development for everyone. Prayer is at the bottom of every good deed. It is important for it to come before every other action: in fact, we receive from the Lord the humble, meek, wise spirit which makes fruitful our presence and our activities.

Then, it is from the Lord’s Spirit that we receive light and wisdom to become detached from earthly things, nay, to use them for the kingdom of heaven. This is what Jesus refers to with His parable. He has already discussed with the disciples and the crowds many times the dangers of wealth, which can become a temptation and obstacles to the faith, and therefore to the quietness of life and the joy of men. This is a topic which is difficult to understand, above all with a way of thinking that is taking as a particular blessing from God the ability to make considerable money. The way of thinking of Jewish people at the time is no different than the one that nowadays continues to conquer the heart of all men! Jesus knows that, and this is why insists on many ways to debate this topic.

Some people think that, by telling the parable of the dishonest administrator, Jesus is praising cunning and dishonesty. If instead we pay attention to the conclusion He draws, we understand that Jesus would like for those who are His disciples to use wealth with spiritual cunning. And the smartness needed is looking not for amassing wealth in order to gain a perishable comfort, but for ensuring a future after death. As long as we are thinking of using the wealth for our material comforts, the wealth is dishonest: it is cheating us, because it will not come with us beyond the end of life: then it will leave us lonely and empty.

We will use the wealth now in a way that it will come handy later. If with it we benefit the poor, the latter, when they will get to the kingdom of heaven, will then testify in our favour in front of God. The poor benefited by us are the true richness which will accompany us into eternal dwellings! Plus, if we are faithful to God when using the earthly goods, - and we will do so if we will not make an idol of them, but a sign of His love to the little -, then He will be able to entrust us with important tasks in His kingdom. In the Church, in fact, we can appreciate too the people who have chosen poverty, and we give them willingly our attention and listening time. The sensitivity of the prophet Amos is very similar to ours.

When we think of the saints, the first ones who come to our minds are really those who have given out everything they owned to the poor and became poor themselves or, to be precise, they have abandoned themselves to the Father’s providence. In this way they have become witnesses of His fatherhood, of the beauty and confidence of Jesus, of the depth of the Holy Spirit!

By praying “for kings and for all in authority”, we will offer the Father our life and our efforts with the desire of gaining for them too the inspiration and the skills for using wealth in a healthy and holy way, the wealth they own and the one they manage.