Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time Read more
Homily
This passage from Matthew's Gospel bears all of its weight if we read it from inside our Babel. We could say rightly that we find ourselves again today in front of a Babel, similar to the one in Scripture: the city where people lost the one Lord as their point of reference; the city of a confusion of languages where everyone is straining to understand each other. The inhabitants were engaged in a monumental effort to consecrate their omnipotence and self-satisfaction. However, having lost their connection with God, each person ended up pursuing his or her own interests losing even his or her capacity for reciprocal encounters. Babel is the place of missed appointments, either with God or with others. In the Gospel, a few Pharisees go to Jesus to ask him which of the commandments is the greatest. To better understand this question, we need to remember that various religious currents within Judaism had codified 613 precepts, 365 of which were negative and 248 of which were positive. A notable number of prescriptions, even if not all of them have equal value. In the Biblical tradition it was clear which held primacy.
In the Book of Deuteronomy it is clearly stated: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" (Deut 6:4-5). Clear, too, is the precept to love your neighbour. Within the Rabbinic tradition one can recall the saying attributed to R. Hillel (a rabbi of the first century): "Do not do to others what is hateful to you; this is the law. All the rest is explanation." Another Jew within the same line says: "You must love your neighbour as you love yourself." It is therefore not exact to say that in the Jewish tradition there is no hierarchy of precepts. The originality of the Gospel does not lie in calling to mind both commandments, but in binding them together tightly to the point of unifying them. The commandment to love your neighbour is absorbed into the first and greatest commandment to love God totally and completelyfor it belongs to the same unifying and fundamental category. The path that arrives to God intersects necessarily with the path that leads us to others, especially to those who need to be defended because they are the weakest. By defending them, we defend God. The evangelist John even says that "we have passed from death to life because we love one another" (1 Jn 3:14). But not only. God does not seem to compete for love with men and women; in a certain sense he does not insist on the reciprocity of love (as it should obviously exist).
Jesus does not say: "Love me as I have loved you," but: "Love one another as I have loved you." Scripture, in its dispositions about hospitality and welcome, is all in this perspective. We are asked to welcome the stranger (shouldn’t we reflect also on the legislation?) and to comfort the orphan and the widow. These are two precepts that in the Babel of consumerist fervour are necessarily set aside. But God is on the side of the weak and he will defend them. On these two commandments (or rather on this one love) depends (literally "hangs") the entirety of the law and the prophets. This is the same as saying that this principle of love gives meaning and unity to the revelation of the Bible. It is also the unifying language of all the dialects and cultures that constitute our Babel. Indeed, everyone is able to speak the language of love of one's neighbour even if they are not believers; and God will understand them because it is his language. This well known passage from Matthew's Gospel reminds us of this: "For I was hungry and you gave me food" (Mt 25:35), God says to an unknowing charitable person. And he saves him or her. This way of behaving also saves Babel from confusion and tragedy. It is not by chance that we then uncover the other meaning of Babel--that is, it means "gate to heaven." Yes! If we speak the language of love (a language that can be spoken in many different cultures and faiths), our Babel can stop being a city of confusion, ambiguity and missed appointments, and can become rather a city that opens the "gate to heaven."
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
