OMELIE / Omelie EN

26/6/2016

02/04/2017 – 5th Sunday of Lent- year A

02/04/2017 – 5th Sunday of Lent- year A 

1st reading Ez 37,12-14 * from Psalm 129 * 2^nd reading Rm 8,8-11 * Gospel John  11,1-45

“From the profound of my heart, I cry to you my Lord”: in this way starts the salm which today we have read and which helped us to pray after the reading of the prophecy of the resurrection, which awaits us. We suffer in the profound abyss of our own sin, of the misery that the sin of the world has caused everywhere. We shout to the Lord, because we have the hope he will realize the promise of a new life. Life will be new because it is in the Life which will be the Spirit whom God let enter in us We will not live anymore a life dominated by egoism, by thinking only for ourselves, by being worried of our own fear. We will instead live a life animated by the wish our Father introduced us: he wishes that we inaugurate in this world his kingdom, he wishes to fulfill his own important projects of love, he wishes to show to all the holiness of his name, teaching people how they can testify his love.

Saint Paul today speaks of the advent of the Spirit, and thus of the newness of life. When the Spirit of God enters into us, our life becomes different, it becomes new because we are not anymore under “the spirit of dominion of the flesh”. Instead we make and we will make the experience of the resurrection: from a material life, dominated by the created things, we go to a life which enjoys the love of God and makes it its own spreading around the scent and the taste of heavens. Jesus is already in this new life rather than us who, in a very fluctuating way, live in this new life only when we are one with Him.

This announcement has prepared us to hear the episode of the return to life of Lazarus. This episode will prepare us to not be in doubt when we hear about the resurrection of Jesus The illness of Lazarus is serious, so serious that pushes his two sisters to call for Jesus. Jesus is their own doctor, and more than a doctor. He went far away from Jerusalem, a city which was dangerous for him: he was in fact sought by the Jews. The news of the illness of his friend does not worry him, it does not hurry him up. For two days he remained in the hiding. When he decides to return to Judea for his friend who is now dead, the disciples worried and frightened tried to dissuade him. The intervention of Thomas attests that they were aware that returning would have been dangerous also for them. Jesus however does not worry himself for his own life, and neither for that of his own disciples, but for the “glory of God”. And his return to Bethany it truly gives glory to God. Either Martha that Mary have had the occasion to show the content of their own faith. Maybe they did not even understood the profound sense of the words they pronounced: “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who came into the world”.

This affirmation precedes and prepares that which the Church then will take for herself and will propose for all her children. We remain bewildered when Jesus, after he had received the welcome of the sisters and after he had shed tears for the death of his friend, he orders to take away the stone of the tomb. To humans he gives this order, whilst he gives thanks to the Father:” Father, I   thank you  because you have listened to me”. And to help the faith of those present and ours, he says directly to the dead, who already stinks, with a shout that leaves us impressed he says: ”Lazarus, come out!”. Is this not a hazardous command? How can a dead person listen? How will he obey?

The voice of Jesus gives life to the death people. The fact happened, in fact the Jews   have commanded a second death of Lazarus, because his return to life was a clear and evident sign of the divinity of Jesus. For us this word addressed to the dead is a motive of huge hope. How many people move around us and are part of our life, but inside they are dead!  How can one give life to whom appears to be dead, forcing to open  eyes and  ears to hear and see the love of those who surround him, to recognize that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life Make him listen to the Word, reach him with some phrases of Lord, and then make them resound to his closed hears. Something inside him will start moving. He will still be in need of help, like Lazarus, who had to be helped to be freed from his bandages and his shroud. Someone will obey Jesus and with delicacy and love to fulfill this service and to make him discover which are the things or the habits or the praxis that have reduced him to live like a dead: "Let him free and let him go”: help him to let himself free from all things that keep him far from his faith and love, so that he can walk alone and return to the life of communion with other sons of God.

I ask myself: do I also look like a dead? Am I still dead? It is difficult for me to hear the Word of Jesus? Do I also need to be helped  to unmaking what it keeps me away from being a true disciple? Besides helping others, I will accept with humility and with joy the help offered to me by the Church of the Lord!