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OMELIE / Omelie EN

26/6/2016
16/07/2017 - Sunday 15th of O.T. - A 

16/07/2017 - Sunday 15th of O.T. - A 

1st reading Is 55,10-11 * from Psalm 64 * 2nd reading Rom 8,18-23 * Gospel Mt 13,1-23


Today, referring to the creation, Saint Paul says that it “had frustration imposed on it”. I am asking myself what this could possibly mean, but then the apostle himself reveals that it has to be “freed from its slavery to corruption and brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God”. This is a way to speak that could seem odd from our point of view. It seems to me that it can be understood in this way: because sin entered the world in different ways, that is to say men’s disobedience to God, this has not only had influence on their hearts, but also on their entire environment. Everything has been enslaved to men’s selfishness and pride. For example: a creature so beautiful and desired as gold, it is now a slave: it has to serve vanity, greed, arrogance, pride and lastly violence: it is an instrument of death. You look at gold, but you cannot see any more the beautiful creature that praises God, you can only see something you want at the cost of…exploiting and making somebody suffer. Gold has to be freed from this slavery. You need to do the same thing the Three Wise Man did in Bethlehem: they gave their own gold to Jesus. From that point on that gold has become an instrument of love, has been freed, has been at the service of the God of love and peace. It became even more precious, because it started to alleviate the sufferings of many poor people, to drive the attention to God’s mysteries, pictured in the icons that make use of the light of the gold as well. In a similar way, all creatures await to become an instrument of love or the instrument of God’s glory, instrument of growth for men and instrument of their communion and solidarity. Only then those creatures will be free, not slaves at the service of sin any more.

This for inanimate creatures; the same things can be said about us! When we serve the Lord we are really free. It is for this reason that the Holy Spirit is given to us, in order for us to welcome Jesus and offer Him the possibility to bear His fruit of love and communion!

In line with the prophetic passage from Isaiah, the page of the Gospel, through the mean of a parable, tries to make us realize how precious is our life if, just like the ground opens for the seed, we are open for God’s gift too. The growth and maturation of the seeds give meaning to the rain and to the snow – both at their service – just like the seed is at the service of the man sowing and of the man harvesting in order to make “food to eat”.

The image of the seed has something powerful and deep to disclose. A sower works hard in order to broadcast the seeds everywhere. It is only natural to ask ourselves at this point: whom or what is Jesus thinking of? He wants to make Himself known, introduce Himself to simple and humble men like someone who has been sent by their loving Father. He wants to help them to welcome Him freely, without any external influence. This is the reason why He speaks through parables. Not everybody and not all at once are able to understand that He is speaking of Himself. Thanks to the explanation he gave to the disciples, we can understand that the sower is him, too. Jesus came to broadcast all over the world, in every direction, in every heart, both good and evil ones. Each one of them will be revealed at the moment in which the seed will ripen! And seeds from each of them will not be any different from it itself. Even the wheat that has to die under the ground in order to bear fruit is an image of Him, the Son of God sent by the Father. He is the wheat that has to bear fruit, but this cannot be achieved everywhere. In the place in which the devil is still strong, he does not have the time to take root. It is just like the seed that is eaten by the birds right away, because it fell on the ground. If a person does not open ears and heart, that heart remains empty. There are others who listen and are full of admiration, they acclaim Jesus because they like Him. These in their turn, too worried about what they like, will not let Jesus die in their hearts. Lastly, there are people that are glad to listen and wants to receive God’s gift, but they cannot let go of the worldly things or at least some of those, even only the desire to have some kind of support in the world. They will be overwhelmed, suffocated, like Peter who was betrayed by the heath of the nice fire of the guards in Caiaphas’s yard.

Our heart has to be empty in order to take Jesus in, the Seeds that dies, because we have frustration imposed on too and we are dominated by the sin of the world. We will be freed and we will become a fertile soil for the divine seed only thanks to Jesus. This is why every resolute and persevering decision of ours to stick with Him is really beautiful. After meditating His parable we will tell Him about our joy of not considering anyone or anything else more important than Him. In this way our life will become the soil where he will bear fruit, rather we ourselves will be that fruit, new seed ready to be sowed or to be milled to make “food to eat”. And every creature passing through our hands will be freed from frustration and they will be useful to the love and glory of God!