3rd Sunday in Advent, Year C; 15th December 2024)

 He who is near, comes to live among us: He will free our life from the weeds that compromise it, He will guard the good wheat so that it matures and bears abundant fruit. Happy Sunday!

DOCTRINE AND FAITH

(Zephaniah 3:14-17; Is 12:2-6; Phil 4:4-7; Luke 3:10-18; 3rd Sunday in Advent, Year C; 15th December 2024)

On this third Sunday of Advent, which the liturgical tradition defines as "Gaudete", starting from the Pauline invitation to always be happy, joy seems explosive and uncontainable. It is expressed first of all in the many imperatives that we hear in Zephaniah: "rejoice"; «shout for joy»; «rejoice and acclaim». "Sing and rejoice", we pray with Isaiah in the responsory of this liturgy of the Word. We have already said it: even the apostle Paul, ("I repeat it to you”) insistently urges a joy that must "always" characterize the life of believers. The vocabulary of joy today is therefore multiple and varied, it is colored with different verbs and adjectives, but its motivation is only one: the closeness of the Lord, his coming among us, his remaining among his people. “The Lord your God is a mighty savior among you,” announces Zephaniah (3:17). Paul echoes him: "The Lord is near" (Phil 4:5).

Luke's Gospel passage seems to act as a counterpoint to this joyful and sunny luminosity, which once again shows us the figure of John the Baptist, with his radical and demanding announcement: John, in fact, presents the Coming One as the one who (holds in his hand the shovel to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn; but he will burn the straw with unquenchable fire" (Luke 3:17). The contrast, however, is only apparent. We can even discern in these words of the Baptist the tone of promise rather than that of threat. He who comes is a powerful savior, Zephaniah announces, and his salvation manifests itself as liberation: he burns and eliminates everything in our life that is weed, chaff, straw; while he collects and eliminates, he safeguards the good wheat the soil of our existence will be able to produce.

Yes, we know it well: our life is often marked by many contradictions, which intertwine with each other to form a tangle that, alone, we cannot untangle. We too have the experience, described by Paul in the Letter to the Romans, of not being able to do the good we would like and, on the contrary, doing the evil we do not want to do (see Rom 7:14-25). We must recognize our inconsistencies, falls, inability to complete the paths of spiritual life that we design with such generosity. Here then is the happy news that the Baptist proclaims; he who is near, comes to live among us, brings with him this promise: he will free our life from the weeds that compromise it, he will guard the good wheat so that it matures and bears abundant fruit. Also, for this reason the Baptist presents Jesus as "stronger than me". If the baptism in water that he imparted was only a sign to recall the need for penance and conversion (that path of sanctification that we desire to follow but which often leaves us with the bitterness of our failures and the emptiness of our failures) the baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire will have the strength to accomplish in us what, left to ourselves and our vain voluntarisms, we are unable to bring to a successful conclusion.

Thus, John responds to the crowds who question him, and his answer goes far beyond the question, offering a deeper and more decisive look. To those who ask him: "What should we do?", John does not limit himself to indicating some signs of conversion, to be placed in ordinary life, so that the word of God and the newness of the Gospel take shape and flesh in it. He also announces that what everyone must do finally becomes possible precisely because he who comes, makes himself close to our lives with all his power of salvation. Yes, the Lord is close: he is close to our weakness with his strength, he is close to our sin with his forgiveness, he is close to our desire with his promise of fulfillment, he is close to the tangle of our inconsistencies with his word which gives order and transparency to our lives.

The announced joy then produces some fruits in us: it frees us from fear (do not fear), Zephaniah announces - since we can hope for a fulfillment that does not come from us but is given to us from above; it makes us lovable: “may your lovability be known to all”, exhorts Paul - because it allows us to be simple and transparent, no longer tangled up in our vain efforts and in our inconsistencies; It makes us people capable of hope and expectation. Thanks to John's preaching, in fact, "the people were waiting" (v.15). Joy generates waiting and waiting is filled with joy. Evangelical joy, in fact, is never just the enjoyment of what we know or what already satisfies our desire: it is always waiting for him who comes to surprise our life with a gift greater than our own hope. And it is an expectation in which our joy mixes with the very joy of God. Zephaniah, in fact, in addition to announcing our joy, reveals to us the very joy of God: «he will rejoice over you... he will rejoice over you with shouts of joy" (3:17). God rejoices over us. This is true joy, its truest and most stable foundation. We rejoice because God comes among us; but even before that, it is God himself who rejoices in dwelling among his people. Our deepest happiness lies in recognizing with amazement that God desires nothing more than this: to share his joy with us. 

+ John I. Okoye

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, 21st January, 2024

 “Until now you have been a fisherman, now you will become a fisherman of men. There is a change, even a radical one, that does not destroy what you have always been but rather makes it mature to its fullness.” May the good Lord in this holy Mass give us the grace to live the life worthy of our call as Christians. Happy Sunday!

DOCTRINE AND FAITH

(Jonah 3,1-5.10; Psalm 24 (25); 1 Cor 7,29-31; Mark 1,14-20; 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, 21st January, 2024)

“The time has become short,” writes the apostle Paul to the Corinthians (1 Cor 7,29). “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand,” Jesus proclaims in Mark (1,15). Jonah also brings Nineveh an announcement regarding time and its end: "Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed" (Jonah 3,4). This attention to time, which dominates the liturgy of the Word on this Sunday, is closely connected to the theme of choice. The time is approaching, and our decision is urgent, which cannot be postponed.

For Paul, the brevity of time changes our relationship with the world, with history, and with the relationships we weave in it. Since Jesus died and rose again, the world has been transformed. His figure passes not because it dissolves into nothingness, but because it is transfigured in the promised fulfillment. The world takes on a new figure: from being the only horizon in which our life is called to play out, it becomes a prophetic sign of a future world, which we certainly still have to wait for, but which already descends into our history, becomes present in it, like a yeast that transforms it, giving it a new meaning. Even the world we know, the relationships we live in it, the commitments we take on, everything must become a sign of something else, that is, of that kingdom of God which, as Jesus announced while walking through the streets of Galilee, is now finally "near" (Mark 1,15). Then there is a "how" that wedges itself between us and reality. “From now on, let those who have wives live as if they had none; those who cry, as if they were not crying; those who rejoice, as if they did not rejoice; those who buy, as if they did not own; those who use the goods of the world, as if they did not use them fully" (1 Cor 7,29-31). We need to understand this "how" well so as not to misunderstand it. It does not mean that what we experience loses depth, and meaning, is no longer worth anything, or that we even have to interrupt the relationships - even marital ones - that characterize our existence. On the contrary, the Apostle's invitation is to continue living what we already live, but by replacing it in a broader gaze - which goes beyond our horizon and manages to glimpse the promised fulfillment, which gives a new meaning to every aspect of our life, existence. The kingdom of God is now so close to our lives that our lives can no longer remain the same. If I cry I know that someone will console my tears forever. If I rejoice, I know that this joy, which over time is always provisional and precarious, will become full and definitive on the coming day. If I possess goods, I know that the true good to be desired is another. Even the love between a man and a woman becomes a sign of that love that will be complete and timeless in the love of God and in the communion of saints. This is the real decision to be made, the conversion to be lived. The Ninevites, in the first reading, convert from their evil works, because they accept Jonah's warning, and above all because they believe in God. They begin to believe in a God who does not punish, but uses mercy. Their conversion corresponds to the conversion of God himself, who "repented of the evil that he had threatened to do to them and did not do it" (Jonah 3,10). It is not that God waits for our behavior to decide how to behave towards us. Rather, it is our conversion that allows us to know what God's authentic face is. If we turn to good, we encounter the God of good, who turns his gaze of benevolence and mercy towards us. Remaining prisoners of the logic of evil prevents us from knowing this face of God and from experiencing his love for him.

Every conversion is, radically, going out of oneself to turn to God and thus receiving a different look at reality, and learning to judge everything according to the logic of that "how" announced by Paul, and being able to discern the proximity in every reality of the Kingdom that becomes truly close to the most ordinary and everyday places of life, to your throwing your nets into the water as you already did yesterday and the day before yesterday. There the Lord comes close and then your life changes, because before your eyes his word opens up a different horizon: "Come after me, I will make you become fishers of men" (Mark 1,17). The newness of God, the unparalleled beauty of his promise, matures within your own life, in your everyday life, to make it different from within. It is not another role that is imposed on you from above, with force, almost with violence. It is rather a new shoot that the Lord slowly matures in the ancient trunk of your life. Until now you have been a fisherman, now you will become a fisherman of men. There is a change, even a radical one, that does not destroy what you have always been but rather makes it mature to its fullness.

Time is short: we have to decide. Jesus passes by and “immediately” calls James and John, just as a moment earlier Simon and Andrew “immediately” left their nets to follow him (see verses 20 and 18). Right away! There's no time. We must convert and believe now. With this awareness: converting to Jesus and believing his word means making his promise explode within our lives, which opens up to an unexpected horizon. The world is transfigured by the light of the Kingdom that now inhabits it, thanks to the gift of God that brings it close to us; thanks to our followership that make us welcome him. + John I. Okoye

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B, 14th January, 2024

 
“We must learn who to look for, and also where and how to look for them: in a home, in the place of the closest and truest human relationships; even within ourselves, in that dwelling that becomes our flesh, now the dwelling of God, the temple of the Spirit!” May we through the benefits of this holy Mass seek God in spirit and truth. Happy Sunday!

DOCTRINE AND FAITH

(1 Samuel 3,3b-10.19; Psalm 39 (40); 1 Corinthians 6, 13c-15a.17-20; John 1,35-42: 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B, 14th January, 2024)

The apostle Paul makes us hear a formidable statement today: "Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you?" (1 Cor 6,19). There is something revolutionary in this phrase, which overturns the criteria with which we are used to imagining the experience of God. In ancient cults we went to the temple to meet God through the mediation of a sacrifice. Animals were sacrificed as substitute victims for one's personal sacrifice. It was necessary to mortify one's body in some way to allow the spirit to become worthy of the experience of the Saint. Not being able to put their own body to death, animals were sacrificed to replace it. This theme of mortification, understood in this misleading sense, has been well present in Christian spirituality and probably still is, at least in part. Paul invites us to convert our gaze/our perception: it is not a question of abandoning the body or putting it to death, but of welcoming it and honoring it as it truly is, the dwelling place of God in the Spirit. If it is necessary to take care of the sanctity of one's body, it is not because one mistrusts it, recognizing it as a place of temptation, fragility or sin, but for the opposite reason: it is the home of the sanctity of God. The presence of the Spirit in our body responds to the logic of the incarnation with which God chooses to manifest himself in history, through progressive stages. His Word was first incarnated in the word of the prophets and wise men; in the mediations of the Law, of worship, of the priesthood, of the temple; in the events of history, interpreted in the light of prophetic and wisdom revelations. Finally, His Word incarnated fully and definitively in the humanity of the Son. By virtue of this culminating incarnation, our very room is transformed into the abode of God. It becomes the body of Christ: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” (1 Cor 6,15). It is to this goal/this point of arrival that the readings of today lead us. The liturgy makes us listen to some stories of calling today: that of Samuel in the First Testament, that of Andrew, his anonymous companion and his brother Simon in the New Testament. In all these cases the word of the Lord reaches us through human mediations. You listen to the word of God by listening to that of your brothers. Samuel needs Eli's word to understand that the voice he is listening to is that of God himself. Andrew and his anonymous companion also begin to follow the Lamb of God after accepting the Baptist's announcement. Peter himself will need Andrew's testimony. The word of God is intertwined with that of men: one resonates within the other. Just as, in a similar way, the dwelling of God descends into our human dwellings, and our homes become the dwelling of God.

The first two disciples, to the question with which Jesus asks them, seem to respond in a banal way: "Rabbi, where are you staying?", "Come and see". The evangelist then narrates: “So they went and saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day” (John 1,38-39). There is all the theological wisdom of John in these few lines. To know who Jesus is, we need to understand where he lives. At the end of the Gospel we will understand his home and his relationship with the Father; that is the place from where he comes and to which he returns, the house in which he lives, to lead us there too. Jesus came to this abode to prepare a place for us, so that we too can be where he is. The communion with the Father, which he lives in the Spirit, he also gives to us. He even builds it in us. “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (Jn 14,23).

In the ancient liturgy, the celebration of Christmas was followed by three stories of manifestation (epiphanies) of Jesus: the revelation to the Magi, the baptism near the Jordan, the wedding at Cana. The liturgy born from Vatican II preserves this succession only in one of the three years of the liturgical cycle (year C). In this Year B of the Ordinary Time, the story of Cana is replaced by this other Johannine passage, with the call of the first disciples. The suggestion that the liturgy offers us is therefore to read this text more in its epiphanic perspective than in its vocation/follow after me. This too is an epiphany of the Lord!

By coming in our flesh, in addition to revealing himself, Jesus reveals us to ourselves in a new way. Our existence is transformed, just as Peter's name is changed. By dwelling where Jesus dwells, in the same love that unites him to the Father, we ourselves become the dwelling place of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the place where God comes to live. This is the experience that the disciples begin to live in this hour that they will never be able to forget: around the tenth hour, four in the afternoon. Simone becomes Cephas, stone, rock. It becomes a place where all God's faithfulness lives. With Andrew, Peter, Mary, the other disciples, we must learn to look not for something (what are you looking for?) but someone, as at the end of the Gospel, the Risen One will ask Mary Magdalene: "Woman, who are you looking for?”. We must learn who to look for, and also where and how to look for them: in a home, in the place of the closest and truest human relationships; even within ourselves, in that dwelling that becomes our flesh, now the dwelling of God, the temple of the Spirit! + John I. Okoye.