OMELIE / Omelie EN

01 set 2024

01/09/2024 - 22nd Sunday in O. T. - B

01/09/2024 - 22^nd Sunday in O. T. - B

Reading 1 DT 4,1-2.6-8 Psalm 14 Reading 2 JAS 1,17-18.21-27 Gospel MK 7,1-8.14-15.21-23

Moses speaks to the people urging it not to add anything to or take away anything from the laws God has given them. Those who might be tempted to modify God’s commandments, would gravely commit the sins of arrogance and pride: they would imply they think they are better than God and superior to Him. The laws given as the ten commandments, laws which involve family and social life, are complete and better than those of any other people. All the nations of the world envy the wisdom, the cleverness and the reach of the ten Words, which we call ten Commandments. They who follow these laws show they adore a true God, a living God, who loves men and walks with them in their journey on earth.

We cannot do anything but add to Moses’ praise of God’s wisdom contained in the Commandments and showed by them. It is a wisdom which shines when we enjoy the joy and the peace granted by living according to those laws, and it shines even when, on the contrary, we can see the sufferings and the long heavy negative repercussions that living not according to them brings about in the life of single people, of families and of the entire society.

Jesus, in the page from the Gospel, highlights again the need to follow the commandments. They cannot be overridden by other secondary laws, which are nothing more than behavioural rules or rules of hygiene. These latter ones can be forgotten without serous consequences, while the damage of disobeying the commandments cannot be reverted.

In our heart there must be a holy fear of God, before worrying about following costumes passed down through generations of men. The man and his whole existence will not be ruined by the hands, dirty or clean, he uses to eat, but by the evil intentions which come from his heart when he disobeys God’s laws. Jesus is listing a dozen of them: “unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly”.

Let us look into our heart and around us: we will see how many of these liberties the man takes, disobeying God, so many we will be left frightened. And we will also notice the sufferings and the damages provoked by these false freedoms.

Saint Jack, in his letter, his asking us to welcome God’s Word to make it visible and contemporary with our life. That is a Word which saves us, because it is making us live and develop the love which makes us similar to our Father, to God.

In fact, he tells us, as every day our Pope Francis does, that true religion is the religion of tangible love, the love which makes us care for those who need help, who are the weakest and most unprotected, a love which makes us control our impulses. To be able to live this free, pure and generous love, we need “to keep oneself unstained by the world”: the world, in fact, is the thing that is keeping us and the Father apart, which hates the name of Jesus and those who follow Him, which advertises disobeying the Commandments of God.

The world is looking at doing and justifying evil, even at promoting it with laws and supporting it with money: it is really a world under Satan’s rule, the enemy of men, that brings suffering and death.

We will be in the world like stars which give direction, give light to journey safely, we will be in the world a sign of a different life, a new one; we will be a gift from God, a gift which offers the light of truth and the reassurance of forgiveness and communion within.

This world does not have any other resource to live and hope but our life, obeying God’s wise laws! This world hates us, but it needs us and lives thanks to us, when we obey the wise instructions of our God and Father.