Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time Read more
Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
First Reading
Genesis 3,9-15
But Yahweh God called to the man. 'Where are you?' he asked. 'I heard the sound of you in the garden,' he replied. 'I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.' 'Who told you that you were naked?' he asked. 'Have you been eating from the tree I forbade you to eat?' The man replied, 'It was the woman you put with me; she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.' Then Yahweh God said to the woman, 'Why did you do that?' The woman replied, 'The snake tempted me and I ate.' Then Yahweh God said to the snake, 'Because you have done this, Accursed be you of all animals wild and tame! On your belly you will go and on dust you will feed as long as you live. I shall put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; it will bruise your head and you will strike its heel.'
Second Reading
2 Corinthians 4,13-5,1
But as we have the same spirit of faith as is described in scripture -- I believed and therefore I spoke -we, too, believe and therefore we, too, speak, realising that he who raised up the Lord Jesus will raise us up with Jesus in our turn, and bring us to himself -- and you as well. You see, everything is for your benefit, so that as grace spreads, so, to the glory of God, thanksgiving may also overflow among more and more people. That is why we do not waver; indeed, though this outer human nature of ours may be falling into decay, at the same time our inner human nature is renewed day by day. The temporary, light burden of our hardships is earning us for ever an utterly incomparable, eternal weight of glory, since what we aim for is not visible but invisible. Visible things are transitory, but invisible things eternal. For we are well aware that when the tent that houses us on earth is folded up, there is a house for us from God, not made by human hands but everlasting, in the heavens.
Reading of the Gospel
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Yesterday I was buried with Christ,
today I rise with you who are risen.
With you I was crucified;
remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Mark 3,20-35
He went home again, and once more such a crowd collected that they could not even have a meal. When his relations heard of this, they set out to take charge of him; they said, 'He is out of his mind.' The scribes who had come down from Jerusalem were saying, 'Beelzebul is in him,' and, 'It is through the prince of devils that he drives devils out.' So he called them to him and spoke to them in parables, 'How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot last. And if a household is divided against itself, that household can never last. Now if Satan has rebelled against himself and is divided, he cannot last either -- it is the end of him. But no one can make his way into a strong man's house and plunder his property unless he has first tied up the strong man. Only then can he plunder his house. 'In truth I tell you, all human sins will be forgiven, and all the blasphemies ever uttered; but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, but is guilty of an eternal sin.' This was because they were saying, 'There is an unclean spirit in him.' Now his mother and his brothers arrived and, standing outside, sent in a message asking for him. A crowd was sitting round him at the time the message was passed to him, 'Look, your mother and brothers and sisters are outside asking for you.' He replied, 'Who are my mother and my brothers?' And looking at those sitting in a circle round him, he said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers. Anyone who does the will of God, that person is my brother and sister and mother.'
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Yesterday I was buried with Christ,
today I rise with you who are risen.
With you I was crucified;
remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Homily
This Sunday's Gospel presents us with Jesus withdrawing into the house in Capernaum with the disciples, and immediately a large crowd throngs in front of the door, so large that they do not even have time to eat. It is an image of Jesus' "exaggerated" love, a love that disquiets and worries because of its radicality.
And there are two attitudes that emerge very clearly: on the one hand "his own," that is, the relatives, Jesus' close friends, perhaps even some of the disciples, those who consider Jesus as their property, something that is only for them and not for everyone. They are scandalised by this going of Jesus among the crowds, his not sparing himself, his giving himself totally to others. They say: "He has gone out of his mind," he has lost his mind. Jesus is out of his mind because one who truly loves cannot but go out of himself, and live one's whole life as a gift, and when one seriously loves, one even loses one's head a little, but one lets his heart speak. The other attitude is that of the Pharisees and scribes, who came from Jerusalem to judge, to criticise, the work of Jesus. And here the confrontation is even harsher because they accuse Jesus of being sent by Beelzebul, one of the many names by which the spirit of division at work in the world is called. When there is someone like Jesus who does good, who loves, who helps others, immediately the envy of evil arouses bad thoughts: it is not possible to do good, what interest is there behind it? It is the story of our days, when every good work is accused of "goodism," and therefore of being evil, as when applying the Gospel, one welcomes foreigners and people want to show that this is a crime.
To all these Jesus answers very clearly: if a kingdom is divided in itself it cannot stand. Evil divides and divides all, and evil ends: Satan is defeated says Jesus, because good is stronger. Jesus is that strong man spoken of in the parable, who binds evil and frees men and women who live as if chained by their fears, it is a holy "pillage" that of Jesus who descends into death to free those who are dead. And he does not do so with violence or the force of arms, but only with his passionate love in that he wants us all to share. Those who do not know how to recognise the good, those who slander about the good that is in the world, resist the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, and that sin that cannot be forgiven, is not a punishment, but it is when we exclude ourselves from this love that it comes to seek us too.
Prayer is the heart of the life of the Community of Sant'Egidio and is its absolute priority. At the end of the day, every the Community of Sant'Egidio, large or small, gathers around the Lord to listen to his Word. The Word of God and the prayer are, in fact, the very basis of the whole life of the Community. The disciples cannot do other than remain at the feet of Jesus, as did Mary of Bethany, to receive his love and learn his ways (Phil. 2:5).
So every evening, when the Community returns to the feet of the Lord, it repeats the words of the anonymous disciple: " Lord, teach us how to pray". Jesus, Master of prayer, continues to answer: "When you pray, say: Abba, Father". It is not a simple exhortation, it is much more. With these words Jesus lets the disciples participate in his own relationship with the Father. Therefore in prayer, the fact of being children of the Father who is in heaven, comes before the words we may say. So praying is above all a way of being! That is to say we are children who turn with faith to the Father, certain that they will be heard.
Jesus teaches us to call God "Our Father". And not simply "Father" or "My Father". Disciples, even when they pray on their own, are never isolated nor they are orphans; they are always members of the Lord's family.
In praying together, beside the mystery of being children of God, there is also the mystery of brotherhood, as the Father of the Church said: "You cannot have God as father without having the church as mother". When praying together, the Holy Spirit assembles the disciples in the upper room together with Mary, the Lord's mother, so that they may direct their gaze towards the Lord's face and learn from Him the secret of his Heart.
The Communities of Sant'Egidio all over the world gather in the various places of prayer and lay before the Lord the hopes and the sufferings of the tired, exhausted crowds of which the Gospel speaks ( Mat. 9: 3-7 ), In these ancient crowds we can see the huge masses of the modern cities, the millions of refugees who continue to flee their countries, the poor, relegated to the very fringe of life and all those who are waiting for someone to take care of them. Praying together includes the cry, the invocation, the aspiration, the desire for peace, the healing and salvation of the men and women of this world. Prayer is never in vain; it rises ceaselessly to the Lord so that anguish is turned into hope, tears into joy, despair into happiness, and solitude into communion. May the Kingdom of God come soon among people!
For the sick, in memory of the dead, for peace
