Roman Rite
XIX Sunday in Ordinary Time- Year C- August 10, 2025
Wis 18:6-9; Ps 33; Heb 1:1-2.8-9; Lk 12:32-48
Ambrosian Rite
XII Sunday of Pentecost
2 Kings 25:1-17; Ps77; Rm2:1-10; Mt 23, 37-24, 2
1) Be ready.
The liturgy of the Word on this 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time invites us to be vigilant (Gospel) and to be faithful (first and second readings). Three times the invitation of the Redeemer is repeated: “Be ready”. To what? To the splendor of the encounter with the Lord of life and not with the threatening God, thief of life; an encounter not with God who is the projection of our fears and our violent moralism but with a God who makes himself a servant of his servants, who “will have them placed at the table and will go on to serve them”. What a stupendous God is he who bends before man with esteem, respect, gratitude. Man has created himself a Master God, Christ reveals to us a Father God, rich in mercy and love. No human mind could and can conceive that: the Lord is a servant; he places himself at the service of our life.
Servants are not required to wait awake until dawn. It is a “one more” dictated neither by duty nor by fear; one waits like this only if one loves and desires and cannot wait for the moment of hugs to come: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be”. A master (that of the parable) who is a treasure, a treasure of a Father towards whom the arrow of the heart points as if He were the beloved of the Song: “I sleep, but my heart watches” (5,2).
Welcoming the pressing invitation to vigilance, typical of the evangelical context reported by today's gospel, we must always be ready for the final and definitive encounter with the Lord: “Blessed are those servants whom the master will find still awake upon his return . . . and if, coming in the middle of the night or before dawn, he will find them like this. Blessed are they!”. Life is a path to eternity; we must traffic all talents intensely, never forgetting that “we do not have here the stable city, but we go in search of the future one” (Heb 13, 14). Every moment becomes precious precisely for this perspective. We must live and work overtime, carrying in our hearts the nostalgia for heaven. God created us to make us participants in his eternal and absolute happiness. We cannot understand what this supreme and total joy consists of; but Jesus makes us understand this in a certain way saying that the situation will then be reversed and God f will put himself at our service: “Truly I tell you, he will gird he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them”. The thought of heaven must make us rejoice with the joy of love (Pope Francis) and must stimulate everyone to make a constant commitment to their own holiness.
2) Providence: God’s loyalty that supports us always.
The central idea of today’s Roman Liturgy is faith (1) as confidence in God’s loyalty.
In the first reading we are told that “On the night of liberation you gave your people, Lord, a pillar of fire as a guide on an unknown journey and as a harmless sun for a glorious emigration” (Wis 18.6). Showing in daylight a column of clouds and at night a column of fire, God never abandons his people. The memory of God’s gifts and of His actions to liberate and guide the chosen people invites us to have faith in the Lord who guides his people from slavery to freedom.
In the second reading the author of the Letter to the Hebrews shows us that faith is inside the history of a people that has strongly believed in God. Abraham is such a great example so that he is called” our Father in faith”. He believed not because he had seen God but because He has listened to Him and started a journey towards an unexpected future. We too are called to live the same faith that has pushed Abraham to live on earth as a pilgrim. The history of salvation, which has in Abraham a stronghold, is like a pilgrimage that gradually is fulfilled revealing more promises towards the full communion with God: from earth to progeny, to live in God’s home.
Like Abraham we believers are always “on the road”, eternal pilgrims towards a homeland that is not a place but a situation: it is not to live with God but to be in Him like the shoots “into” the grapevine. Paraphrasing a bit the Letter to Diognetus (ii, 5, 1-16) we can say that we Christians inhabit a country, but we are there as pilgrims: every foreign land is homeland for us, every homeland is a foreign land. We live our life on earth but we are citizen of Heaven (Heb 13-14)
(1) Faith is the interior attitude of the believer. The words of the Bible that are translated with “faith” or “loyalty’ (in Hebrew emunah, emet) and with “believe” come from the same root (‘mn); in Greek pistis “faith’ e pisteuein “to believe”. The basic idea, in Hebrew, is that one of resoluteness; in Greek it is the one of persuading. ( See Jean- Yves Lacoste, “Dictionnaire critique de théologie”, Paris 2007).
We find a true testimony to this in the consecrated Virgins who live in the world but are not of the world. With their consecration they have given their heart to the Spouse for whom they wait intensely to welcome him with devotion, to love him in chastity and to serve him continually (see Rite of the Consecration of the Virgins, 25). Consecrated life shows the truth of the experience of giving oneself to God. In the continuous conversion to the Lord every person finds a solid road that makes him or her free.
3) The watch: our loyalty to Christ always
In the third reading, a text from the Evangelist Luke (12; 32-48), Jesus beside the invitation to have faith in providence, speaks also of the importance of the watch while waiting for the return of the Lord Jesus.
The subject to which Jesus turns to is the” little flock”: a flock loved by God, chosen and intended for the Kingdom, but a little flock. This small number could raise doubt and discouragement in the heart of many. It is a discouragement to push away: the history of salvation is ruled by the law of the “remainders of Israel” that is the small group of true believers in whom the Kingdom is realized for the benefit of all.
The small flock is invited not to be afraid.” Do not be afraid” means watch, readiness and commitment, all in a spirit of great faith. The Kingdom is donated (the Father” was pleased to give us the Kingdom”) and rests on his love not on our performances. We must not be afraid.
The small flock is invited also to give away its assets. “Sell all that you have and give the money to charity” This is the richness that never fails compared to the “have more” we find in the parable of the unwise rich man. This is the orientation for our heart ”Where your treasure is, there is your heart”.
4) Blind to evil to see Good.
The evangelical story carries on with a language full of imagery (verses 35-40) whose meaning is however very clear. “Gird your loins and light your lamps”. The image of the lamps reminds us of the parable of the wise and unwise virgins. The belt recalls the way the laborers lifted and rolled their garments at their waist so to be free in their movements and the way the travelers lifted their garments to walk faster. It is advisable to have the wandering and vigil attitude that doesn’t allow being inactive. Too many things can obstruct the spirit and make us inactive at the expenses of hope. (Hope is not only waiting for the afterlife but also the ability to transform things on this earth keeping in mind that we need to convert first. Tolstoy would be right when he wrote“Everybody thinks about changing the world, but nobody thinks about changing himself”).
After the short parable of the Owner that comes back from the wedding and the one of the Lord that comes suddenly like a robber, there is the one of the loyal administrator (verses 41-48). In this way the theme of the watch is enriched by a new attitude, the loyalty in the administration of the owner’s assets and the sense of responsibility. What are the owner’s assets to be administered with loyalty and responsibility? The text doesn’t say it clearly but we can think at the use of all the goods (wealth, relationships, all) that God gave us and that we must administrate and not kept for us only.
Loyalty and the sense of responsibility are requested in proportion with the knowledge that everyone has of the owner. The bigger is the knowledge the bigger is the responsibility. Loyalty and responsibility are above all requested to the believers to do the true work in the God’s wine yard, the Church.
The important thing is to grow in faith to “see” that God is Father and that he can be called owner because he is omnipotent. In Jesus the Father puts omnipotence to the service of his charity making it good and lovable by everyone. In Jesus faith makes us “blind” to evil and prophets to Good, to Charity, to Sainthood and to Eternal Life. Acting in this way we can guide our brothers in Christ to Peace and to the Father.
Let us not be tired of looking at Christ on the Cross. The more we put our eyes on Him and the more we’ll see the light through his chest open to love, the more we will believe because faith is born from the light of love.
Let us become poor in spirit making all assets servant of Justice and using them with the justice that consumes in charity and reveals itself in mercy (see Pope Francis, Lumen Fidei, 7 and 13).
Faith is the light of love
In God’s gift of faith, a supernatural infused virtue, we realize that a great love has been offered us, a good word has been spoken to us, and that when we welcome that word, Jesus Christ the Word made flesh, the Holy Spirit transforms us, lights up our way to the future and enables us joyfully to advance along that way on wings of hope. Faith, hope and charity constitute a wonderful plot are the driving force of the Christian life as it advances towards full communion with God. (LF 7)
Believing means entrusting oneself to a merciful love which always accepts and pardons, which sustains and directs our lives, and which shows its power by its ability to make straight the crooked lines of our history. Faith consists in the willingness to let ourselves be constantly transformed and renewed by God’s call. (LF 13)
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento