OMELIE / Omelie EN

09 mag 2021

09/05/2021 – 6th Sunday of Easter - year B

09/05/2021 – 6^th Sunday of Easter - year B

Reading 1 ACTS 10,25-26.34-35.44-48 Psalm 97/96 Reading 2 1JN 4,7-10 Gospel JN 15,9-17

The main theme of today’s readings is love. Jesus begins a short conversation with the disciples to describe love, the “substrate”, you could say, of the life of the true, fulfilled man, who God had thought to create “in his image, according to his likeness”, and who then instead has become deformed and spoiled through sin.

The moment in which the evangelist is ascribing the conversation to is the last Supper. Jesus directs the disciples to look at the way in which the Father behaves, whose love He feels immersed in. He already knows the love the Father has given Him and promised Him, which will be truly unveiled with His resurrection from the dead; the disciples can think only about what they have seen, and the love shown in Jesus' life through the miracles He had done: the Father has loved Him to the point of giving Him the possibility to do things so great and wonderful. From the Father He has learnt, so He has loved His friends selflessly, without taking into consideration the effort. How did He love them? He has treated them as friends: He, so great, them, so poor, insignificant, still worried about themselves only. He has told them about the most precious gifts, the secrets He received from the Father. Jesus has loved His disciples, and He has loved us, offering His life, making it available. And we know what this has cost Him.

Now He makes a few recommendations to the disciples, to whom He is talking for the last time: they will have to “remain” in His love in order to be successful in “loving one another”, following and re-living His example. “Remain in my love”. Jesus makes this recommendation because He cares about every disciple’s life, a recommendation that can be read in two different ways: let yourselves be enveloped in my care, let yourselves be warmed up only by the warmth that comes from me, treasure my teachings; but also: love only me, do not give your heart to anyone else, keep your eyes fixed only on me. He is saying this so we can be saved, not only, but also so our life may be useful to the world, and in us joy may remain alive, the one which is deep and truly in the heart.

John’s letter is echoing Jesus’ teaching. He too talks about love, nay, about God who is love. If God is love, and if God is our Father, maybe we are too made of love? They who look at us should not see anything but love. The love that should be visible in us cannot be other than God’s, the God who is Father. True love is not the one we make happen with our feelings and imagination, but the one God has shown us and given us through His Son. It is important then that we look at Him, that we let our eyes be filled with the Father’s examples of love: all the Scriptures are made for this, but above all Jesus’ life, which makes concrete the fullness of the Father’s love for every and each man and for all human society.

Peter, entering the house of the centurion Cornelius, a pagan man, keeps his eyes on God’s love: only because of this he can win his cultural and religious hesitation, and he can announce Jesus to the pagans gathered in that house. By looking at the Father’s love, the apostle is able to love those who he would have never approached and loved. He loves them by announcing them the Lord Jesus, and then welcoming in the holy community of the Church through the baptism. In this way the union between Peter and his Lord and Master is fruitful, a fruit of peace and holiness, a fruit that changes direction from the orientation of the world, a fruit that gives glory to God and that makes happy all the believers.

I will try too in the next few days to «see» God’s love around me and to let myself be guided by it.