OMELIE / Omelie EN

23 giu 2024

23/06/2024 - 12th Sunday in O. T. - B

23/06/2024 - 12^th Sunday in O. T. - B

Reading 1 JB 38,1.8-11 Psalm 106 Reading 2 2COR 5,14-17 Gospel MK 4,35-41

The question the Lord asks Job is surprising. Who has established the borders of the sea? Who has fixed those borders and stops it from going beyond them? Was it maybe you? What power do you have over the forces of nature? Are they not obeying too some laws?

These questions should help us to abandon ourselves to God’s wisdom with trust. Everything in our life and in history is guided by His hand: it is not our place to rebel, not even to complain. What God allows, or what He decides, is definitely coming for our benefit. We cannot judge His work, because we do not know anything about what is going to happen in the future. The questions in front of which Job is silent are preparing us to listen to the story recounted in the Gospel.

In the stormy sea Jesus sleeps peacefully in the boat. Along with His disciples we ask ourselves if in His being peaceful there is some mindlessness. And instead Jesus, on His part, rebukes the frightened disciples, surprised by their fear. Fear is a sign of lack of faith. If you are afraid you do not trust in God’s omnipotence, you do not believe that He can command the wind and the sea, you do not believe He might use this situation of danger for some mysterious reason of His, to do some good for you or the Church or the people. Jesus is always above our fears, first of all to remind us to have faith. He has no fear, why then should I?

The boat which was crossing the stormy sea is a good image to describe the Church. It can always count on Jesus’s presence, even if it looks like He is sleeping, away or unable to act. The disciples know He is with them, and this is enough. The Church in the world has always been and will always be caught in headwinds, and has always been and always is at risk of the waves of the sea covering it, of the ideologies and ideas and habits of the world penetrating in it, so much so that someone in it or out of it is exposed to the same dangers. But Jesus is present. And His presence gives peace and courage.

Or instead you are convinced that He does not see or hear? You think He is not interested in the fate of the boat in which He Himself is resting? He continues to have faith in the Father, who knows and sees everything and takes care of the needs of His children with His merciful omnipotence.

Jesus is dead, Saint Paul tells us, and His death is our salvation. If He has died for us, so we can be saved, can you not trust in the Father by offering Him both your life and your deat? Living with Jesus is renewing the life. Living with Him can bring so much newness that you can do what you have never done in your life: “the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come”.

When you live with Jesus the Father becomes more concrete than the things you see with your own eyes: the latter are bound to come to an end, while He remains forever.

Human reasonings make space for new thoughts and new reasonings, which take into account more God’s love and power than our habits and human reactions, always inaccurate. When I become anxious for the present or the future I bring to my mind Jesus’s sleep in the boat. I will not go and wake Him, but I will lie down to sleep next to him!