09/09/2007 - 23th SUNDAY in ORDINARY
TIME - Year C
First Reading Wisdom 9, 13-18 Psalm 90 Second Reading Philemon 9-10.
12-17 Gospel Lk 14, 25-33
God wants our happiness and for this reason gives us the life, and the life
to the full. He, who created us, knows the road for our true felicity. We are
not able to teach Him anything. We are hindered by our mentality debilitated
by the body and his passions; and for this reason we need light, and this light
is coming from the wisdom of the Father. This fact is the main teaching of today's
first reading. Just looking around us, we may see how easily some people abandon
their husband or wife, to whom they promised fidelity for the whole life. They
do not ask the heavenly Father for some advice, nor do they accept the commands
He gave us times ago. Following their own momentary longings, they create situations
of deep sufferings, sufferings for themselves and for those around them. If
we are able, or better, if we have real will to seek God's wisdom, our life
will go on, on the road of peace and serenity.
God's road, which is secure and straight, is Jesus. It is for this reason that
He himself proposes us to follow Him, to take Him as the last and supreme reference.
"If anyone comes to me without turning his back on his father and mother,
his wife and his children, his brothers and sisters, indeed his very self, he
cannot be my follower".
Many persons were following Jesus on the roads of Palestine. But He knew that
some of them ha different interests and ware not ready to suffer with Him and
for Him. For this reason He said, in order to discourage those who followed
Him with secondary aims, that those who are non ready to enter in conflict with
their families or even with themselves, will not be able to stay with Him. If
someone loves Jesus really, soon or later, he will have problems and conflicts
with his relatives: parents, sons, sisters, friends etc; everyone can become
enemy of those who love Jesus. Those who love Jesus become kind, affable, serous,
generous, pure, honest, faithful, free of ambiguity. These good qualities may
be seen by others as a kind of accusation or even condemnation of their way
of life, and thus they will not support them.
Those who want to stay with Jesus have to know that they are not following someone
who goes on making miracles, but with someone who will die on the cross, despised
by the leaders and abandoned by everyone, even by his own disciples. Do you
want to become His disciple? Think the matter over. Are you able to support
the fact of being alone, to abandon the worldly wealth? Go and calculate the
outlay as those who want to built a tower, or like the king who is about to
march against the enemy. You too you have to sit down and to reflect; until
which point are you able to support solitude, loneliness, derision, being despised
by those you love?
Jesus is life, and life to the full. Those who begin to stay with Him will no
more support to stay without Him. You too, stay for some time with Jesus, learning
from Him, and after you will be able to support the privation of everything
and everyone, and you will become a true disciple. The privations are necessary
in order to become solid. St.Paul asks his friend Philemon a decision which
is not easy, in order to manifest and really have a life according to the faith.
He is asking him to receive a slave, who is now a faithful, but to receive him
not as a slave but as a brother. The love of Jesus changes us and changes too
our relations with other people.
In order to stay with Him, it is really necessary to love Him, and love Him
more than everything and everyone!