OMELIE / Omelie EN

24 lug 2022

24/07/2022 – 17th Sunday in O. T. - year C

24/07/2022 – 17^th Sunday in O. T. - year C

Reading 1 GEN 18,20-21.23-32 Psalm 137 Reading 2 COL 2,12-14 Gospel LK 11,1-13

The page from the book of Genesis telling about the exchange between Abraham and God is one of the most beautiful of the Bible. Abraham shows confidence and courage while talking to God, giving Him merciful options: He is so similar to us that we think we can give advice to God. Without saying it out loud, we think we can be better and wiser than Him. Abraham thought he could and should make suggestions to God to tell Him to which point His patience and love had to stretch.

God lets Himself be advised, accepts the man’s suggestions, but He goes so much further than Abraham’s generosity! It is really astonishing! Abraham, and every men with him, at a certain point stops, cannot imagine that a greater patience and mercy than the one he is suggesting can exist. And instead God is showing Himself the true and generous lover of men.

God is open to spare an entire people’s life thanks to ten people’s faithfulness, but certainly He has an even bigger plan which Abraham cannot yet understand. We know it: He will send a single man, a man without sin, who will offer His life not only for a whole city, but for the entire world as well. He is the Son, Jesus: Saint Paul talks about Him today.

On earth there is no just person, we are all sinners. He has forgiven all our sins: whoever welcomes Him becomes just in God’s eyes. Thanks to Him then, in the world there are many justs, in every city and country, and thanks to Him then God spares the world. We can see with growing clarity how the world is guilty, how much it disobeys God, how big its sins are, how big a similarity there is between our nations and the city of Sodom, in disarray among sexual perversions. Let us not become sad nor disappointed: God’s love is always ready, is always tangible in Jesus and the Church, which carries always with Him the cross to ensure the salvation for every single person marked by the sad and terrible consequences of sin.

Certainly is going to be still necessary for the man to offer God the prayer, like Abraham. But the prayer the man offers now is not anymore like the one Abraham has devised with his intelligence and his desires, born often out of the momentary needs. We offer the Father Jesus’ prayer, the one He Himself puts in our hearts and on our lips. With this prayer we are not setting off to be able to bend God’s heart, but instead to change ours!

The disciples knew how to pray like all good Jews. However, after seeing how Jesus was praying, they understood that His prayer was different, and they asked to learn from Him. Jesus then showed them His way to deal with God. He is praying under the assumption He is a son, like an obedient child, who enjoys his dad’s greatness and wisdom.

Jesus is interested in the desires and the will of the Father, in everything He retains important, and makes His own the plan the Father is developing for the life of every person and of the entire world.

He asks to the Father the bread, the bread He has prepared to make us a single heart and a single soul, the eucharistic bread which brings the Holy Spirit in us.

Jesus teaches us also to ask for forgiveness for ourselves, knowing we need to be purified.

And He also asks for the strength for us to be able to resist temptations: we are engulfed in them and confused by them. The worst temptations are those to isolate, separate ourselves from the rest of the community, disobey God and not to pursue the obedience to His ministers: in this way division rules, a favourable climate for the enemy of the man and God. God is a Father, who loves us and does not refuse to give us what is necessary for our life, does not refuse to give us His Spirit which gives life and communion for His children’s deep joy and peace!

When we pray we set out first of all to convert, to make ours the Father’s desires, to understand and fulfill His will, which is good, better than ours. We offer ourselves to live in a way to show how His kingdom changes the world, from a place in which selfishness spreads, to a place in which shines the Father’s love lived by His children. In our way of living will shine God’s holiness, whose name will be exalted by all peoples.