OMELIE / Omelie EN

19 lug 2020

19/07/2020 -  16th Sunday in O. T. - A 

19/07/2020 -  16^th Sunday in T.O. - A 

Reading 1 WIS 12,13.16-19 * Psalm 85 * Reading 2 ROM 8,26-27 * Gospel MT 13,24-43

About our God, the first reading is saying: “There is no god besides you who have the care of all, that you need show you have not unjustly condemned”. God is our Father, and He is really inimitable. He is strong, and He is showing us His strength if necessary. However, He is meek, and we enjoy His indulgence and patience. However, there are some who think they can judge Him and talk against Him, saying that He is unjust and heartless. He does not need to defend Himself from this accusation, it is so clear this is not the case. Blind is the man who cannot see His justice and does not have the patience to wait for it to be clear. With His behaviour, so with His strength and patience, God is teaching us to love men, all of them, even those who think they deserve great punishments. I am among the latter too, and, by God’s grace, He gives me the possibility to hope for His leniency. He is waiting, and still awaits, and so I have the time to think things over in order to feel the regret and therefore to ask for forgiveness.

This theme is also all over the first of the three parables that today Jesus give us for us to carefully listen to. In the field sown with good seed it is growing weeds, which delays the growth and the ripening of the good seed. What should we do? Do we need to use violence and eradicate it? Jesus has given us the explanation of this parable. God can wait and be patient. God is different from us  men, who would like to eliminate right away the evil which makes us suffer. While wanting to eliminate right away who commits evil, the man condemns himself. Who, in fact, is the person who does not carry in his heart, mixed with God's word, a whole series of desires, energies, evil wills, generating evil? Certainly you can and you have to act swiftly to avoid the temptation to carry on working in your heart, but you cannot exclude from the Christian Community those people who have let themselves to the seduced, won and overpowered. They need to be helped, and we need to patiently wait for God’s Word to grow in them,  become strong and in this way they will win against the damaging roots hidden inside them.

The kingdom of heaven grows without the need for violence, with meekness and humility. It grows slowly, without requiring to become immediately visible, immediately finished and perfect. It slowly grows and fulfills God's will on earth. Talking about the kingdom of heaven I think of the Church, the community of believers, I think of the parish, of the prayer and charity groups. It is the Church, in all its small and contained pieces, attracting men looking for shelter and nourishment, as the birds find them among the branches of the mustard plant grown mysteriously from such a small seed! The birds of the sky are, according to the prophets, the pagan peoples, those which do not even know God and His love. All men enjoy the presence of those who believe in Jesus, as polenta or pasta get benefit from the pinch of salt dissolved in their cooking water.

It is again the Church giving a possibility of communion and harmony to human gatherings, family and society, as the yeast works the great amount of flour mixed by a brave woman! Have you ever asked yourself why this woman in Jesus' parable, mixes three measures of weath flour? Three measures are three great volumes! Jesus is thinking of a great quantity of bread: this will be available to a family for a very long time, or it needs to be served on the table of a banquet with a lot of invitees, doesn’t it? The Church needs to be able to offer nourishment to the whole world, to every people!

The Kingdom of Heaven needs to continuously grow without stopping, and we are so weak and fragile! We have prayer, which makes God intervene with its power! But how we can pray and what can you ask God for? He Himself puts in our heart His Spirit, which transforms our holy aspirations, like almost “groanings”, in precise requests which the Father, strong and benevolent, understands and grants with love! Come, Holy Spirit!