Week 28 Thursday (Year 2)

Readings: Ephesians 1:1-10; Psalm 98; Luke 11:47-54

In Luke's account, Jesus is invariably gentler than he is presented in Matthew or in Mark, whether in regard to the apostles and disciples or in regard to the enemies of Jesus. But of course the end result is the same: Jesus is crucified. Today's gospel contains woes against various elements in the religious authorities, as incisive if not as insulting as the woes against the scribes and Pharisees that we find in Matthew 23. And the end result is the same: they are increasingly angry with him and with what he is saying about them to the people.

Here they are described as 'scholars of the law' and 'those who build the monuments of the prophets' but it is the same scribes and Pharisees who see that the criticisms are leveled against them and who react accordingly. The scholars of the law have taken away the key of knowledge, not entering themselves but not allowing anybody else to enter either. A less clearly defined group, those who build the monuments of the prophets, are those who support prophets as long as they are dead but whenever a living prophet arises will be among the first to make sure he is silenced.

Religious teachers and authorities have to listen carefully to these words and examine their own thoughts, words, deeds and omissions in the light of them. Just like everybody else, and even more so, they are called to repent and to position themselves in God's way of bringing in the kingdom of grace. The challenge to them is to remain open to the Spirit who breathes where he will and who cannot be confined to particular institutions or doctrines or practices. And yet it is the same Spirit who establishes and animates the institutions and doctrines and practices in which the relationship with God is lived and understood and celebrated.

It is too simple to set up here an easy contrast between Judaism and Christianity. It is too easy also to set up an easy contrast between institutional types and charismatic types, or between priestly types and prophetic types, between radicals who are faithful to the wild call of the gospel and liberals who will always be at hand to anoint the bodies of dead prophets and to bury martyred apostles. Often the best we can manage is to live between such polarities, making efforts to keep people together, complementing each other in the ways in which they bear witness to the truth of God.

But the mystery of God's will is that all things are summed up in Christ. It is Christ who is the recapitulation of all things. We are not going to do it no matter what our political or intellectual achievements. It is Christ who brings all together, opening the door of knowledge and revealing the glory of God's grace. We are not going to do it no matter what our institutional structures, our grand strategies or our good intentions.

When the Blood of this prophet is shed, and the blood of this Apostle is poured out, it is the moment of the world's redemption. He is not just one more martyred prophet in the line running from Abel to Zechariah. This dead body is not to be contained in any tomb, to be honoured once a year by those claiming to be his heirs. Because it has been carried to the throne of grace, this Blood flows forever, redeeming and bringing forgiveness. The power of this Blood tears the curtain of the Temple and opens the way to a new knowledge and a new life. This is the Blood which establishes unity between the persecuted and those who killed them. This is the Blood which heals the world's wounds, forgives the world's sins, and lavishes grace on the world.

The preaching of this truth and the testimony to this grace continue to invite rejection and persecution. That preaching and that testimony continue to call us to repent and to change, to position ourselves in God's way of bringing in the kingdom of grace. And that, it seems, will always be some kind of threat to us, a subversion of our comfort, a relativisation of our achievements, a criticism of our best intentions, changes in our way of living. Only the Spirit, who has spoken through the prophets, will keep us on this road of repentance, ready to learn and to change again, the Spirit who bears witness with the water and the Blood to the riches of God's grace.

Week 28 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: Galatians 5:18-25; Psalm 1; Luke 11:42-46

There is a beautiful image in today's responsorial psalm. The one who delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it is like a tree planted by the water's edge. He yields fruit in due season, his leaves never fade, and all he does prospers. Such a person has well-placed roots. The spring of life and energy and action in her is healthy and reliable and fruitful.

St Paul knew this psalm very well. He is the most famous Pharisee to come to faith in Jesus and what he says about the law and the Spirit is therefore of great interest. He contrasts them, yes, but not as two alternative codes of law, one detailed and negative, the other general and positive. It is rather that any person's ability to keep the law of God - which we all ought to do - depends on his or her being planted in the Spirit, rooted in that divine gift of living water. Paul had come to realise that the positive fruits of the law could only be borne by people living in the Spirit. The law is good and wise and true as he says elsewhere. But without the Spirit any effort to live by the law will be 'fleshly', it will inevitably be partial and external, selective and more or less hypocritical.

It can be tempting to set up an easy opposition between 'old testament law' and 'new testament spirit'. But to give in to this tempation would be a very serious misunderstanding of the gospel, and of the whole history of salvation. The new law is not an alternative to the old law but is its full flourishing. The new law, of which the prophets already spoke, is the life of the faithful believer flowing from his or her communion with the Lord, the God of Israel. What will secure that communion for us?

Jesus himself warns us off this facile opposition through a couple of clues in today's gospel reading. 'These you should have done', he says, referring to justice and the love of God, 'without overlooking the others', those more minor matters of the law which the faithful person will also want to observe, because they are part of God's law.

The second clue comes in his response to the lawyer. 'You impose on people burdens too hard to carry', Jesus says. The yoke or burden is another image for God's law which guides the steps of the one who submits to it. In Matthew's gospel Jesus says that his yoke is easy and his burden (same term as here) is light. What makes it an easy yoke? That is does not ask very much of us? What makes it a light burden? That its demands are superficial and not radical? He is speaking of the cross and walking behind him on that way. So too is Paul in Galatians: 'far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world' (6:14). He speaks of crucifixion in today's first reading also, another warning against any understanding of Christian discipleship that would under-estimate its costliness.

The tree by the water's edge is the cross of Christ planted in our earth. Just down the road from where I now live is the church of San Clemente with its renowned mosaic of the cross as the tree of life. This dry and dead wood, irrigated by the blood of the one dying upon it, becomes a living tree from which flows the water of the river of life, the gift of the Spirit, the sacramental life of the Church. This is the light and eternally fruitful burden we are asked to accept and to carry. Its power reaches the depths of our hearts, irrigating the dry and dead places,  filling us with its own love. That love is the Holy Spirit who enables us to observe the law of God and so to bear the fruit of the cross: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, against which there is no law, but which are the fulfillment of the law of God, God's intention for His people.

Week 28 Monday (Year 2)

Readings: Galatians 4:22-24, 26-27, 31-5:1; Psalm 113;  Luke 11:29-32

In what does the sign of Jonah consist? For Luke, it is the preaching of Jonah and the repentance of the Ninevites that is the sign for those listening to Jesus. The Queen of Sheba came to hear Solomon’s wisdom and the people of Nineveh heard Jonah’s preaching. There is something here greater than either Jonah or Solomon. You ought, then, to listen to him, to Jesus, to live by his wisdom, and to answer his call to repentance.

In Matthew, Jesus brings in the earlier part of Jonah’s adventures and points to his three days in the belly of the fish. This is the sign of Jonah, according to Matthew, a foreshadowing of the three days Jesus would spend lying dead in the tomb. Matthew’s account gives us the stronger imagery and we may be tempted to assume that Luke implies the same thing. There are few biblical images more powerful than that of Jonah in the belly of the great fish.

But there is no indication that the Ninevites knew anything about the fish! For Luke, the sign is the preaching of Jonah and the repentance of the people. And this clears the way for us to notice something else in Jonah’s experience at Nineveh. Not only do the people repent, but God repented of the evil which he had said he would do to them. God’s repentance displeased Jonah exceedingly, we are told, and he was angry.

When Jesus directed his listeners to the sign of Jonah it has to be that the divine mercy shown there is uppermost in his mind. He has come, after all, to show us the Father. The repentance of God in the Book of Jonah anticipates so many of the parables of Jesus in which the justice of God becomes puzzling because swallowed up in God’s mercy. If we feel a bit angry at the prodigal son, or the eleventh-hour labourers who are paid the same as those who worked all day, or at the thought of prostitutes and other public sinners entering the kingdom of heaven before us, then we are in the company of Jonah.

He felt used by God. His mission was a complete success, the whole city repented at his preaching, and still he was angry. This, then, is the sign of Jonah. In calling us to repentance, God is asking us to become like Him. He is always ready to be merciful, to turn towards us. Like the father in the story of the prodigal son, the first sign of repentance from the sinner wins God’s attention and mercy. (In fact we believe it would not even be possible without God’s prior attention and mercy.)

The freedom of heaven, of which Paul speaks in the first reading, is seen in God's freedom and extravagant generosity which so annoy Jonah. Grace is not confined and those who are called to be preachers of grace must never forget it. The servant of the Word is always at God's disposal, doing only his duty, preaching the call to repentance and the coming of the kingdom. There is no neat measure of the effectiveness of that preaching, no way of predicting what its results might be.

For freedom Christ has set you free, Paul says elsewhere in Galatians. As followers of Jesus we are messengers of that freedom, servants doing our duty, instruments in whatever way God judges best in alerting others to the freedom God has promised.

Week 28 Sunday (Year B)

Readings: Wisdom 7:7-11; Psalm 89/90; Hebrews 4:12-13; Mark 10:17-30

'What is to be adored?' It is another way of putting the man's question. What good is there to which I can give myself fully so as to inherit eternal life? What good is proportionate to such an inheritance?

Jesus' first response is to say, 'well nothing in this world'. There is no such good except in God.

But God has given us the way by which we can journey towards Him - he has shared His Wisdom (first reading), given us His Word (second reading), He has sent His Son (gospel reading).

'You know the wisdom God has taught you already', is Jesus' second response. It is in the commandments. This is the natural law, more or less known to all human beings: do not kill, or commit adultery, or steal, or lie, or defraud, and honour your parents.

'I've been following this way', the man says, 'all my life'. Jesus looked at him and loved him. In this the most profound reality is revealed: in heriting eternal life is not something we guarantee for ourselves by our actions or our dispositions. Eternal life is to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. This knowledge in us follows on our being known by God, being regarded by Him, being loved by Him.

So in his third and final response to the man Jesus says, in effect, 'you inherit eternal life by becoming like me because in doing that you begin to live the life of God'. Give all you have to the poor and follow me. This complete detachment opens us to transcendence, to God, to the only good worthy of our adoration. We move into this detachment by giving all we have to the poor as God has given to us all that He has - His eternally begotten and only Son.

The disciples then join the conversation. 'You are saying it is impossible', because we are all rich, perhaps not in money but in other ways - power, influence, esteem, intelligence, knowledge, etc. How would we ever be able to give it all away to the poor so as to follow Jesus in such total freedom and detachment?

It is impossible, Jesus agrees. The disproportion is too great between what you need to do and what you can do. But everything is possible for God. It is God's gaze, God's love, God's knowledge of us that opens us to the possibility of eternal life. God being among us in His Son: this is the good thing that makes it possible for us to inherit eternal life.

We are called to walk on the water towards Him, on the path of faith, with trust and hope, opening ourselves to a goodness beyond our imagination. The poor are always with us, reminding us of this teaching and calling us to an ever deeper following of Christ.

Week 28 Saturday (Year 1)

Readings: Romans 4:13,16-18; Psalm 105; Luke 12:8-12

In today's gospel Jesus is particularly concerned with our speaking, what we say, how we say it, what we ought to say. Believers are called to speak about the Son of Man, and about the Spirit. If they are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities they are not to be anxious about how or what to say. The Holy Spirit will teach them in that very hour what they ought to say.

If we deny the Son of Man, we will ourselves be denied by him. We have taken up a position in relation to him which, we can say, he is ready to acknowledge. That seems bad enough but is not yet the most serious situation. If we sin against the Son of Man we can still be forgiven but if we blaspheme against the Holy Spirit we will not be forgiven. How are we to understand this when we are often re-assured that there is no sin too great to be forgiven?

Some years ago George Steiner wrote a very stimulating book called Real Presences. It's subtitle is 'Is there anything in what we say?' More than ever we are swamped and close to drowning in a flood of words that stream over us and around us every day. In all these millions of words spoken, written, broadcast, is there any depth, any meaning, any truth? We may be left confused, uncertain and tentative at the plethora of opinions, the mountains of information, the overwhelming extent of it all. We might take denying the Son of Man to mean this experience of confusion, uncertainty and scepticism: we deny the Word, that meaning and truth are to be found in it.

To deny the Holy Spirit would then signify taking a further step. It means not only are we unable to identify any meaning or truth in all that is flowing around us, we deny that there can be any meaning or truth-making significance in what is flowing around us. There is no breath sustaining all these words. There is no foundation in them on which to build anything. There is no significance that can be drawn out and admired through meditating on all these words. Perhaps it is the move from agnosticism to atheism.

In the face of this which is more likely, that we will be presumptuous or despairing? Presumption often seems more likely, as people assert, often quite dogmatically, that there is no deep meaning or truth to be found. We set the limits ourselves to the significance of our words and dismiss anybody who, in faith, proposes that a wiser heart calls us beyond those limits. Despair is deeper and darker and it brings conversation to an end: if people are consistent in their skepticism then no thought, no conversation, is possible. There is nothing in what we say, so say what you like or say nothing, it is all the same.

In this context, presumption and despair become two ways of saying the same thing: there is no final meaning in what we say or do. How we live, what we say, what we do: it does not really matter. And this is the sin against the Holy Spirit which cannot be forgiven because it does not allow space for a source of forgiveness, there is no place in which conversation can continue.

The Holy Spirit promised by Jesus and sent from the Father becomes the hope of believers. This hope rests on faith in God who, as Paul says in today's first reading, gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In his faith Abraham hoped against hope and so became the father of many nations. These were not just empty words, futile promises, but words filled with meaning and sustained by the Holy Spirit. George Steiner's argument is that the human conversation carries meaning and truth only where it remains open to transcendence. We can put it like this: where we seek to bear witness to the truth we must stand with the Son of Man, the Wisdom and Word of the Father, and the Holy Spirit will teach us what we ought to say.

Week 28 Monday (Year 1)

Readings: Romans 1:1-7; Psalm 98; Luke 11:29-32

In what does the sign of Jonah consist? We might be tempted to think that the answer is obvious: Jonah's three days in the belly of the whale and his deliverance therefrom is the sign.

But for Luke it is the preaching of Jonah and the repentance of the Ninevites that is the sign for those listening to Jesus. The Queen of Sheba came to hear Solomon’s wisdom and the people of Nineveh heard Jonah’s preaching. There is something greater here than either Jonah or Solomon. You ought, then, to listen to him, to Jesus, to live by his wisdom, and to answer his call to repentance.

In Matthew, Jesus brings in the earlier part of Jonah’s adventures and points to his three days in the belly of the fish. This is the sign of Jonah, according to Matthew, a foreshadowing of the three days Jesus would spend lying dead in the tomb. Matthew’s account gives us the stronger imagery and we are easily tempted to assume that Luke implies the same thing. There are few biblical images more powerful than that of Jonah in the belly of the great fish.

But for Luke it is the preaching of Jonah and the repentance of the people that constitutes the sign. And this clears the way for us to notice something else in Jonah’s experience at Nineveh. Not only do the people repent, but God repented of the evil which he had said he would do to them. God’s repentance displeased Jonah exceedingly, we are told, and he was angry.

When Jesus directed his listeners to the sign of Jonah it has to be that the divine mercy shown there is uppermost in his mind. He has come, after all, to show us the Father. The repentance of God in the Book of Jonah anticipates so many of the parables of Jesus in which the justice of God becomes puzzling because swallowed up in God’s mercy. If we feel a bit angry at the prodigal son, or the eleventh-hour labourers who are paid the same as those who worked all day, or at the thought of prostitutes and other public sinners entering the kingdom of heaven before us, then we are in the company of Jonah and we need to think again about the sign of Jonah.

He felt used by God. His mission was a complete success, the whole city repented at his preaching, and still he was angry. This is the sign of Jonah. In calling us to repentance, God is asking us to become like Him. He is always ready to be merciful, to turn towards us. Like the father in the story of the prodigal son, the first sign of repentance from the sinner wins God’s attention and mercy. In fact we believe it would not even be possible without God’s prior attention and mercy.

We can add to this today the sign of Paul, seen in the first reading from his letter to the Romans. He has received the grace of apostleship and lives now in the obedience of faith. His famous conversion was in response to God turning towards him as God turned towards the Ninevites. This is what is asked of Jonah: be converted to God's way of caring for His people. It is what is asked also of us: treasure the sign of Jonah, that God is always ready to embrace in mercy and love those who turn to Him.

Week 28 Sunday (Year A)

 Readings: Isaiah 25.6-10a; Psalm 22/23; Philippians 4.12-14,19-20; Matthew 22:1-14

The readings build a beautiful picture of God’s universal and extravagant love. What God wants is the salvation of all people. The celebration of this divine love is described by the prophet Isaiah as a wonderful banquet – the best of wine, the best of food, plenty for everybody. The responsorial psalm is along the same lines. The Lord is our shepherd who takes care of us especially when we find ourselves in dark places and who has prepared a banquet for us. Goodness and kindness will follow us all the days of our life and then, at the end, we shall dwell in the Lord’s house for ever and ever. The second reading, from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, repeats the point: God will fulfil all your needs as lavishly as only God can.

Generous, extravagant, fulfilling all needs, unexpected and unsolicited gifts: so is the grace of God in his love for humanity.

But then an off note begins to sound, a fly in the ointment, a bitter drop to distract us from the sweet things we have been hearing up to now. Paul says that such confidence in God’s goodness enable him to cope with whatever circumstances life sends his way: poor or rich, poverty or plenty, he can do all things with the help of the One who strengthens him. It was good, he concludes, that you shared in my hardships. Why good? So as to appreciate the gift, it seems, to realise that even in the dark valleys the Lord is there, not just present with us but sharing those things with us and strengthening us to live through them.

The gospel parable brings even deeper darkness and bitterness. There are some who will refuse to come to the great feast which has been prepared, now described as the wedding banquet for a king’s son. They turn away, valuing other things ahead of that banquet. It even turns nasty with some of them harassing and killing the servants of the king. His retaliation is swift and brutal. The invitation is thrown open to anybody and everybody, bad and good alike, so that the wedding hall is filled with guests.

We could stop there and some think that the parable ends there. It would be puzzling enough. What has happened to the universal and extravagant love, to the power of God to take away all sadness and mourning, everything that might hinder access to anybody’s joyful participation in the banquet? It seems that people are free to refuse and what a tragedy that would be. Failing to appreciate the gift offered, disdaining the generosity of the one who invites you, even to the point of being violent towards those who renew the invitation – it seems as if the refusal must be conscious, deliberate, considered, free.

But we could also read on, listening to what is either the second part of the parable, or a second parable latched on to the first one. This is about a person invited to the wedding feast who is not wearing the appropriate dress and this is the strangest note of all in this passage. Are we all supposed to go around all the time dressed in our best clobber just in case somebody, out of the blue, invites us to a wedding? Imagine the cities and countryside of the world with everybody dressed every day for a wedding! It would be a wonderful sight, a kind of sartorial paradise, and would keep the fashion designers of Milan and Paris in business like never before.

So what is it about? It can seem as if what was unconditional up to then – the universal and extravagant love of God offered to all people – has suddenly become conditional. There is something we must be or do in order to maintain our place at the banquet. Rich and poor are invited, good and bad are invited, anybody and everybody is invited – so what is it they must become or must do in order to secure their place?

Perhaps it is simply a parable of readiness like others in the gospel. Be prepared. Be alert. Be watchful. You know not the day nor the hour. Don’t forget to have oil in your lamp, because the bridegroom is coming at an hour you do not expect.

And what does it mean to ‘have oil in your lamp’, to have on a ‘wedding garment’? Isaiah talks about the Lord removing garments from us – the veil of mourning, the shroud enwrapping all nations. The gospel now speaks of a garment we need to put on which must refer to what Saint Paul talks about when he tells us to ‘put on Christ’ (Romans 13:14; Galatians 3:27). To wear the right garment means to follow Christ – especially on the way of the cross, as Paul says elsewhere in Philippians – and so to recognize and appreciate the gift held out to us in the invitation we have received.

The man being cast out is not then an arbitrary punishment by a god once again become irascible. It is rather the truth of the man’s situation, that he has not disposed himself to appreciate the gift for what it is: a gift, freely, generously and extravagantly offered. So not to be presumed upon and not to be taken without gratitude to the giver.

That seems to be it. We are all invited to the banquet. We anticipate it in our celebration of the Eucharist. But we must make every effort to dispose ourselves correctly. It is only the courteous thing to do. But it also means learning how to appreciate love received so that we might become capable in our turn of loving in the same way: freely, generously, extravagantly. Loving one another as Jesus loved his disciples, and loving him, the Father’s invitation to us, so that we will be ready to be with him when the time comes, our hearts filled with gratitude and wonder.

We pray that the Lord will help us to dress ourselves in that way and so be ready. The invitation has already been sent and we have received it. In the Lord’s own house shall we dwell, when God has removed the garments that hinder our joy and enables us to put on the one garment that guarantees our eternal happiness, God’s only Son, Jesus Christ.

Week 28 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: Ephesians 1:11-14; Psalm 33; Luke 12:1-7

Elisabeth of the Trinity was a French Carmelite nun who lived at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Searching the New Testament for words that would serve as her motto, blessed Elisabeth fixed on a phrase that we find twice in the first reading at Mass today: she wanted to be, on earth and in heaven, 'the praise of his glory'. Saint Paul says, in fact, that those who come to believe in Christ have been predestined to be 'the praise of Christ's glory', that they are among those whom God has acquired for himself to the praise of his glory.

What is this glory, to the praise of which blessed Elisabeth wanted to consecrate herself completely? It is the word of truth, says Paul, the Word that is Christ himself, bringing to the world the light of truth, the light of redemption, the first installment of which we have already received when we were sealed with the Holy Spirit.

In the gospel reading also Jesus speaks about truth, the light that will illuminate all things. In 2016 our Order, the Order of preachers founded by Saint Dominic Guzman, celebrates the eighth centenary of its confirmation. It is an Order specially dedicated to preaching the gospel of truth for the salvation of human beings. Many things in the readings today call us back to this, our Christian vocation: to live in the truth of the Lord.

We might, however, interpret as threats certain expressions about truth in the gospel reading that we read today - in this light  all secrets will be revealed, and what has been whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops. If it was a cruel light we would have reason to be fearful. But this light of the Word of God is always the light of an eternal and infinite love. The attention God gives to our hairs, and to all the details of our lives, is not the attention of an enemy, or of one who does not have our interest at heart. It is comparable instead to the attention adults give to a newborn child, when we look carefully at all the details of the baby, with a look of affection, admiration and love.

So this light of love and truth is what Dominicans have preached for eight hundred years and continue to preach today. This is the glory to the praise of which blessed Elisabeth - soon to be Saint Elisabeth of the Trinity - wished to dedicate herself completely.

This homily was preached at a Mass broadcast on Radio Maria (Italia) on Friday 14 October 2016. The Mass was celebrated at the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria della Neve e San Domenico, in Pratovecchio, Tuscany. The Italian version is below.

Domenica prossima, a San Pietro in Vaticano, Papa Francesco celebrerà la canonizzazione di un gruppo di nuovi santi, fra cui la Beata Elisabetta della Trinità, monaca carmelitana francese della fine dell’ottocento e l’inizio del novecento. Mentre cercava nel nuovo testamento qualche parola da prendere come proprio motto, la beata Elisabetta si soffermò su una frase che troviamo due volte nella prima lettura della Messa di oggi: voleva essere, in terra e nel paradiso, ‘lode della sua gloria’. San Paolo dice, infatti, che noi Cristiani siamo predestinati ad essere lode della gloria di Cristo, che siamo fra coloro che Dio si è acquistato a lode della sua gloria.

Qual è questa gloria alla lode della quale la beata Elisabetta voleva consacrarsi totalmente? É la parola della verità, dice san Paolo, la Parola che è Cristo stesso, che porta nel mondo la luce della verità, la luce della redenzione, la caparra della quale abbiamo ricevuto nel sigillo dello Spirito Santo.

Anche nel vangelo Gesù parla della verità, di questa luce che illuminerà tutte le cose. In quest’anno il nostro Ordine, l’Ordine dei predicatori fondato da san Domenico di Guzman, celebra l’ottavo centenario della sua conferma. È un Ordine particolarmente dedito alla predicazione del vangelo della verità per la salvezza degli uomini. Tante cose nelle letture ci richiamano a questa nostra vocazione cristiana: vivere nella verità del Signore.

Potremmo però interpretare come minacce certe espressioni sulla verità nel brano del vangelo che abbiamo appena ascoltato – in questa luce della verità, infatti, saranno rivelati tutti i segreti, saranno pubblicate tutte le cose dette all’orecchio nelle stanze più interne. Se fosse una luce crudele, avremmo ragione ad essere paurosi. Ma questa luce della Parola di Dio è la luce di un amore eterno e infinito. L’attenzione di Dio ai nostri capelli, e a tutti i dettagli delle nostre vite, non è l’attenzione di un nemico o di uno che non ha alcun interesse per noi nel suo cuore. È invece paragonabile all’attenzione degli adulti per un neonato, quando guardiamo attentamente tutti i dettagli del bambino, con uno sguardo di affetto, di ammirazione e di amore.

Allora, questa luce di amore e di verità è ciò che i Domenicani hanno predicato per otto cento anni e continuano a predicare oggi. Questa è la gloria alla lode della quale la beata Elisabetta voleva dedicarsi totalmente.

Week 28 Saturday (Year 1)

Readings: Romans 4:13, 16-18; Psalm 105; Luke 12:8-12

Homily for Saturday Week 28: The Spirit of Truth