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OMELIE / Omelie EN

20 dic 2020
20/12/2020  4th Sunday of Advent - B 

20/12/2020  4th Sunday of Advent - B 

Reading 1 2SAM 7,1-5.8-12.14.16 * Psalm 88 * Reading 2 ROM 16,25-27 * Gospel LK 1,26-38

 

Nathan, God’s prophet, listens to king David’s desires and plans, and he approves them, but he is ready to change his mind and backtrack when he realises God’s intentions. The thoughts, nay, God’s plans often are different even from His prophets' ones. David would like to build a beautiful temple to offer God as dwelling, but God instead surprises men. He cannot and does not want to dwell in a building, He does not want to be closed in a place, He has no intention to constrain Himself inside four walls, not even if they are golden. He, who has created the man with a heart able to love, wants to be among men, nay, even inside them in a way to identify Himself with them. In order to start this new project, behold, God chooses a family, David’s very one, in order to establish in it His dwelling and from it to reach then the whole human society. In this family the son will be born, God’s Son, who will bring the whole world salvation and novelty through His kingdom. Neither Nathan nor David are able to understand completely God’s intentions, and therefore they do not receive full disclosure of this plan of God’s.

Full disclosure will be given to a young woman in Nazareth, a girl without any affinity either with the kings’ thrones or with men’s ambitions of greatness. She is so little that she is not even able to resist God’s great works, or to doubt His wonderful and ineffable plans. She thinks God so superior that she is convinced He can achieve also everything she cannot understand. The most beautiful thing is that God can make use of her, of her full availability, of her freedom. “May it be done to me according to your word”, Mary answers the angel. Is like if she said: I do not understand, but I know that God is great and good, I know that what He does is for everyone’s own good, and therefore here I am. I do not concern myself with what will happen to me; if I will be in God’s hands, that is the best place for me, I do not wish anything else.

We do not know what to admire more, God’s plan or Mary’s full availability. The former and the latter are necessary parts of the same mystery. God’s plan which takes shape in the smallness of the man is immense: in that man we can see the light and the colour of God’s greatness. Like the apostle we are filled with amazement and we would like to give God the Father glory and honour because He has chosen a way so close to our understanding in order to send His Son. He has chosen actual men, nay, the simplicity of a girl who with her obedience is an example for our life of faith.

We can feel Mary so close to us because of her smallness, even if she has been made great and superior to us by the presence of God in her. She is the first true temple of God, which shows and teaches us how we need to be and what we need to do in order to let the same God take dwelling in us too. We look at her, we observe her well in these last days of Advent, in order to be always ready to make space in us for the Son of God, who when will be born will still be in Mary’s arms, loved and guarded by her, by her fed and kissed.

This year’s Christmas feast will be a precious occasion, also and above all for us, to love, kiss and welcome the Son of God. We will hand Him the little gestures of love that we will offer to the people we have close, those we usually look at with coldness or indifference, to those who we are used ask things from. We will give someone the occasion to say thank you to the Father, and to say it to the Son too, who is revealing us His wisdom and love!