Sunday Homily

The Pharisees approached to test him, today's gospel tells us. The divine answer comes with a command, 'let no man do anything against the divine will, the union dearly desired by God.  What wisdom in the face of failure! Lord, everyone is against you, and you tell us that this story is not about you. Yet you tell us that our faithfulness to your will concerns you, and our holiness pleases you.

On this Sunday we are invited to discover the divine will, a will revealed to mankind from the beginning of creation, foreseen for our lives, including today, here. The union. God does not want man to be alone. God understands our loneliness and all its consequences. For this reason, the Lord asks us to become children again, the children of God. To associate him as our Father.  The same rebirth that the Lord demanded of Nicodemus. By becoming the child of God, we will be elevated, like the heavenly beings who will be able to see the angels of the Lord descending and ascending. What a response with an invitation, a call to holiness, a gift offered freely.

This call to unite with God is linked to a separation willed by the Lord. You are separating yourself from your roots, an uprooting, so that you may be rooted in God. You are going to found a new life, according to the divine desire. Thus, you will no longer be a spiritual consumer, but a creator with God, who will be able to give, to give new life, through your own rebirth. You are no more two, but one in Christ.

This mysterious sleep of which the first reading tells us is important in our daily lives. This sleep, voluntarily willed by the Lord, makes us discover the otherness that is not like me, yet of me, for me and in me. This sleep makes us plunge into the surprise of life, to accept the other as he or she is, with respect and honour that we reserve for God who loves us. It is no longer the other who is for me, it is I who is invited to discover him or her, so that the other takes his or her place, his or her rightful place in me, which is right before God.

If we have so many divorces in the world, it is because we are wounded, disappointed, by the other. We belatedly recognise that our expectations were not consistent with God's will. To do this, we must always remain in dialogue, promoting forgiveness and reconciliation, every day, washing up after each meal. Very often our house built on the rock of love and faith, and it is destroyed, not because there was a storm from outside. If it is gone, it is because of our own ego centric interiority, this house so solid, yet not habitable, by the dust of our personal interests. Man is no longer capable of dialogue, of reconciliation with his brothers and sisters. 

Unfortunately, we are no longer with the Lord. We do not love Him as He has loved us. God so loved the world that he sent his Son, not to judge us, but through him to save the world. He wanted us to have life, life in its fullness in Jesus Christ, a life in God, by God and for God. That they may be one, as we are ONE, was Jesus' prayer to his Father. We do not respect this prayer of the Lord. My friends, let us love Christ, let us cooperate with Him, that the divine will may be accomplished in us. Let us pray for the Church of the Lord, the Body of Christ, which we form in Baptism.