OMELIE / Omelie EN

16 feb 2025

16/02/2025 - 6th Sunday of the O.T. - Year C

16/02/2025 - 6th Sunday of the O.T. - Year C

1st reading Jer 17,5-8 from Psalm 1 2nd reading 1Cor 15,12.16-20 Gospel Lk 6,17.20-26

The beginning of the first reading might be frightening: ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man’. We would not expect the word ‘cursed’ among God's words. With this expression, the Lord certainly does not want to curse anyone, but to awaken in everyone a special concern. Whoever does not put his trust in God, to place it instead in men, sets himself on a path of illusions and painful disappointments.

No man, as long as he lives, is completely trustworthy: just as he is subject to the possibility of contracting a physical disease, so he can always fall into temptation. Unfortunately, this has happened many times in history, also in the history of the Church. We must therefore place our trust in the Lord, in him alone. Not even in myself can I trust completely.

There are certainly people to whose discernment we can entrust our choices, in whose wisdom we can trust and refresh ourselves, but only because they too - in turn - are firmly grounded on the Word of God.

‘Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and the Lord is his trust,’ the prophet continues. When we meet such a blessed man, we can rejoice: he will be a blessing for us too, and we can listen to him and ask his advice for our lives, while always trusting in God.

We are made in such a way that we need someone's word and advice. Let us see how many, finding no one to confide in, pay good money to be heard for an hour by people who have studied human science for a few years. Do they benefit? Sometimes yes, if that person, to whom they open their heart, trusts in the Lord!

The words that come out of Jesus' mouth, and which we hear today, repeat the prophet's teaching to us with other images.

Blessed is the man who does not place his expectations and hopes in riches, but only in God. Blessed also is the man who suffers the lack of the things of this world and the affections of men, and awaits his own satisfaction from the goodness of God. Blessed is the man who obeys the Father, and loves the Son, even at the cost of being mocked and persecuted. It is not the lack of things or affections that makes him blessed, but the trust in God that matures and is strengthened by these poverties.

He who is steadfastly united with God has peace in his heart too, and becomes a spreader of peace around him. He becomes a blessing for the world. The world lives thanks to those who offer themselves to God, listen to him, bear witness to him by suffering.

But where do we find the conviction and the strength to continue trusting in the Lord despite all the evil that surrounds us and would like to win us back? Where does the Christian base his motivation to remain firm in the faith? The Apostle tells us. ‘Christ is risen from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have died’. This is the certainty that makes us secure, strong, stable. This is the victory over every temptation that wants to bring us back into the world.

Jesus Christ is the man who ‘trusts in the Lord’ even unto death, he is the one who has put all hope in the Father, he is the truly poor, he is the afflicted one who weeps for the sins of the men around him, the one who hungers for God's will and his consolation, the one despised by all, even though he gave his life for all. He died, yes, but God raised him from the dead, and so he gives us the certainty that his is God's way, the way of life, and that the resurrection awaits us too. This certainty gives value and security to all our faith, to all our, sometimes laboured and always tempted, trust in the Lord!

We will look around us for people who live the same certainty in the resurrection, to share their faith and hope, to be helped not to be misled by the unbelief and materialism that dominate the world: we will be safe in moments of loneliness and suffering.