OMELIE / Omelie EN

03 ago 2025

03/08/2025 - 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C

03/08/2025 - 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C

First reading Qo 1:2; 2:21-23 from Psalm 94 Second reading Col 3:1-5, 9-11 Gospel Lk 12:13-21

St Paul speaks to his faithful with great love and wisdom. Not all those who have been baptised in the name of Jesus come to understand the responsibilities of living in faith. There are those who think they can continue with their habits based on lies, love of money and therefore fraud, impurity, foul language, slander, and other habits that we do not even realise are incompatible with the love for the Lord. No, says the apostle: if you have now committed yourself to Christ Jesus, see to it that you make him look good through the way you live. He has forgiven you, he died for you, and would you be capable of living as you did when you were a pagan, as if nothing had happened? That does not give you credit; on the contrary, it makes you look ridiculous and causes your Lord to be despised.

From your way of speaking, from your way of behaving in the sexual sphere, from your way of considering the things of this world and riches, from your desires, it must be understood that you are no longer of this world, but that you belong to Jesus and to his kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. From your entire behaviour, the beauty of that God who is the Father of all, even of those who do not know him and therefore reject him, must transpire.

Christians live a pure life, inwardly poor, free from accusations and condemnations against others, even at the cost of suffering, because they always want to be witnesses: I must always remember that I am a witness either to truth or to falsehood. Christians bear witness that God loves the human beings, that Jesus died for them and awaits them all in the resurrection. Christians are witnesses to the holiness of God; they reveal the true face of God to men, to their brothers and sisters and to those who have no idea, except a false one, of the divinity.

We will get used to considering our life in this way, otherwise we will always do everything as a task, and our effort will seem difficult to bear, sometimes unbearable. Many do not understand why they should be pure, others do not understand why they should be honest even when they can get away with it. If we consider our being Christians as a way of having one of many religions or a way of respecting commandments, we have understood nothing of the Gospel. Such people remain like those who “store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God”.

In order to understand and succeed in living to some extent the Gospel, that is, God's wisdom and love for us, we will fully embrace the insight and truth that Jesus reveals to us today in the parable of the rich man. This man is not a man who belongs to the past; on the contrary, he could very well represent each one of us.

We are the ones who continue to calculate the possibility of having more: more work, more financial resources, more leisure, more travel, more entertainment. We are so quick to complain: we realise that we are always poor. The man in the parable, after becoming rich, realised that he did not have enough space to store his supplies; he realised that he was... poor! But, says Jesus, he was foolish.

We are foolish when we forget to include God's presence and fatherhood in our calculations.

We are foolish when we forget that the goods of this world will never make us happy, nor will they put in a good word for us at the final judgement.

We are foolish when we forget that riches are given to us to enrich the world with generous love, to alleviate the suffering of the poor, to bear witness that God provides for those who have nothing.

We are foolish when we think we are masters of what goes through our hands: we do not even know if we will still be here tomorrow.

The author of Ecclesiastes is right when he says that everything is vanity, everything is deception, everything is illusion. The only reality is God, and the only purpose of our life is therefore to be part of his life of love!

Let us pay more attention to the exhortation of the Apostle Paul: he strongly tells us to keep our eyes fixed on the things above, not to let ourselves be influenced by the things of the earth. The things above are the things of the kingdom of heaven, those we see first and foremost on the cross of Jesus: love to the end, love that rises from the dead. Our whole life will be luminous!