OMELIE / Omelie EN

23 mar 2025

23/03/2025 - 3rd Sunday of Lent - year C

23/03/2025 - 3^rd Sunday of Lent - year C

Reading 1 EX 3:1-8.13-15 Psalm 102 Reading 2 1COR 10:1-6.10-12 Gospel LK 13:1-9

Crime reports do not frighten Jesus. He knows that in the world happen many events causing suffering, many events that frighten us and raise questions in our hearts. Often the fear of death and our sin raise questions we are tempted to answer by judging men or, in some cases, God himself. Why such misfortune? Is it a punishment? Did they deserve it? Why is God so unjust as to allow innocent children to suffer? Why does God not stop the hand or break the arm of delinquents and violent people?

Questions and answers that fuel new questions, observations that still do not give peace. Pilate had men killed while they were offering their sacrifices in the temple of Jerusalem: Jesus answers those who thought God had to have punished them for who knows what crimes, if he had allowed them to die like that. They were Galileans, heretics. Jesus recalls another happening, repeating the answer to the same mistaken conviction regarding those who had been killed by a collapsed tower, even though these were not heretics: they were Jews, and Jews from the holy city nonetheless, from Jerusalem!

These questions are still there, sometimes even for us, because we are used to look at the past, the only reality we think to know. But God also knows what remains hidden to us, even the future: Jesus knows this, so he merely gives an answer that takes into account what may happen to us if we do not live with him. We cannot judge others, we just have to make sure that we do not deserve the judgement that we are so ready to pass against them.

“If you do not repent, you will all perish as they did”. For us, if we continue to live as we are accustomed, as we like, following our impulses, death will be a misfortune, a punishment. The death of those who have been killed and those who have been buried under the rubbles is a warning for us. Let us not judge their lives, but be mindful of our own.

“If you do not repent...": we have the possibility to change, we can adhere to him, to Jesus, and then everything changes: life, including the moment of death, will have a new purpose, a new meaning. By accepting Jesus, our life will bear fruit, it will give joy to God, it will be collaboration in his plan of salvation both of those who oppress and of those who are oppressed.

The calling of Moses through the voice coming from the burning bush gives us an insight into the purpose of Jesus' coming and presence: just as Moses had to free the people from the suffering of slavery, so Jesus will have to free us all from the suffering and oppression of the sin that overwhelms humanity.

And just as Moses needed cooperators, so Jesus does.

We therefore prepare ourselves not only to welcome salvation, joy, new life, but we also place ourselves at the Lord's disposal. We prepare ourselves to answer his call, bearing in mind that it is he who knows what is good for us, who wants our happiness, who gives us fullness of life by making us part of his love and his loving.

Everything that God has done in the history of his people has the significance of revealing to us who Jesus is. This is how we must read past events: the cloud, the sea, the manna, the rock from which water flowed are signs that can only be understood in the light of the life of the Lord who died and has risen again.

We are always weak and in need of him: we therefore stand with him, otherwise we might fall into emptiness. “Whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall” the apostle St. Paul exhorts us. Therefore, we will stand, that is, stay alive in the faith, and then our faith will be a source of life and joy for many: those who seek their own satisfaction among the leaves of many useless things, will find as a valid alternative the sweet nourishment, the fruit, that our adherence to Jesus produces.

In this jubilee year our conversion will be solid and lasting: we will live with Jesus and for him, so that he himself may be present in us and use our lives to manifest himself and to save our brothers and sisters who are in danger of getting lost in the futility of materialism.