OMELIE / Omelie EN

10 nov 2024

10/11/2024 - 32nd Sunday in O.T. - B

10/11/2024 - 32^nd Sunday in O.T. - B

Reading 1 1KGS 17,10-16 Psalm 145 Reading 2 HEB 9,24-28 Gospel MK 12,38-44

In Italy: 74^th Thanksgiving Day

The letter to the Hebrews is talking about Jesus Christ as the high priest who enters into the sanctuary, but not the one built by men, which is only a symbol of the true one. He enters into where God is, and not where men have only provided “his footstool” on top of the Arc of the Covenant. Jesus is with God, where He has carried out the final sacrifice, the one the Father is pleased by, His perfect love, the love which gives its life up. In this way He has cancelled out the sin, so the distance between humanity and the God of love and mercy.

Jesus entering into the true and eternal sanctuary is something He Himself has prepared by exercising love and mercy.

Today we hear two of His teachings to the disciples. They have just had the occasion to admire a scribe for his speech on loving God and the neighbour: however, there is the risk for them to take the scribes as an example for their life, who instead often give an example of vanity, arrogance, ambition and even greed: they were also taking on the role of lawyers for poor and vulnerable widows.

Jesus as a reason to talk like that, He is talking about things that were really happening, and He absolutely wanted to prevent His disciples from becoming like that. The vanity and the vainglory have to remain out of the Church, the arrogance cannot be a motivation for those who are responsible for the community, greed, which has the tendency to exploit the sufferings of the poor, has to feel revolting to those who want to be His. “Beware of the scribes!”.

Appropriately, we are inside the Temple, where the most famous scribes are present. The disciples from Galilee had always wanted to see the scribes of Jerusalem, people kept in high esteem by everyone. Jesus is not afraid to warn them about the very same scribes. In the Temple they are more subjects of scandal than good examples. The disciples’ spiritual life has nothing to gain from admiring people who are ambitious, vain, arrogant and who love wealth.

But in the Temple Jesus does not close His eyes: He sees everything that is going on in the place which is “my Father’s House”. He can see who is giving money and He hears the amount of what the rich are throwing in the chests of the treasury, an amount that was declared loudly so the secretary could add it to the register.

And there it is, He also hears the amount declared by a woman dressed as a widow.

Jesus calls the disciples right away, who come fast, like the chicks of a hen who has found something nice for them to eat. The widow has “put in more than all the other contributors”. Who knows how much!

What are the disciples expecting? All those rich people later in the day might not even remember they have offered money, because nothing will be missing on their tables: they have given money they did not need, because they had much more.

The woman, in the evening, will be aware she has nothing to eat. She is very much like the widow the prophet Elijah has met and who has offered him everything she had, because she was sure God would take care of her. Jesus can see that the woman has shared His way of being a high priest: by giving her own life!