Fr Daniele's Daily Homily: 26th March
This time of lock down for more than 2 billion people in the world at the moment is really a calling to come back to what is essential in our life, and especially to renew our relationship with God. We can feel, like the people of Israel in the first reading, as if we are in the desert: deprived of everything we had and we were used to do, without anybody around, and without even the sacraments and the churches to go and pray.
But maybe God is calling us to look for him in a new way, in spirit and truth, as we recently heard in the Gospel about the Samaritan woman in John 4. Nobody and nothing prevent us from praying. On the contrary, when we feel in such desert and desolation it's the best moment when we can become silent and listen to God's voice.
The first convicts and settlers in Australia had to wait many years until they could have priests with them to celebrate the Eucharist. But their faith didn't let them give up. In many countries in Asia the first Christians were lay people without priests and sacraments in different periods of persecutions. But that didn't prevent them from keeping their faith and even giving their life for Jesus.
In the Gospel, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for not understanding what is essential in the faith:
"You have never heard his voice, you have never seen his shape, and his word finds no home in you...You study the scriptures...yet you refuse to come to me for life!... you have no love of God in you." This time can really be a unique opportunity to establish or renew a very personal relationship with God, knowing that he listens to each one of our prayers with the care and compassion of the most tender father or mother.
As he listened to Moses' prayer to save the people of Israel, he's going to do the same with us today. Whereas we are seeing so much pain in the world today, we can be sure that the Lord is suffering together with each person, just as he wept in front of Lazarus' tomb in John 11, which is the Gospel of next Sunday. And he's also confidently waiting with us for our resurrection.
First reading
Exodus 32:7-14
Moses pleads with the Lord his God to spare Israel
The Lord spoke to Moses, ‘Go down now, because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have apostatised. They have been quick to leave the way I marked out for them; they have made themselves a calf of molten metal and have worshipped it and offered it sacrifice. “Here is your God, Israel,” they have cried “who brought you up from the land of Egypt!”’ the Lord said to Moses, ‘I can see how headstrong these people are! Leave me, now, my wrath shall blaze out against them and devour them; of you, however, I will make a great nation.’
But Moses pleaded with the Lord his God. ‘Lord,’ he said ‘why should your wrath blaze out against this people of yours whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with arm outstretched and mighty hand? Why let the Egyptians say, “Ah, it was in treachery that he brought them out, to do them to death in the mountains and wipe them off the face of the earth”? Leave your burning wrath; relent and do not bring this disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, your servants to whom by your own self you swore and made this promise: I will make your offspring as many as the stars of heaven, and all this land which I promised I will give to your descendants, and it shall be their heritage for ever.’
So the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 105(106):19-23
Lord, remember us, for the love you bear your people.
They fashioned a calf at Horeb
and worshipped an image of metal,
exchanging the God who was their glory
for the image of a bull that eats grass.
Lord, remember us, for the love you bear your people.
They forgot the God who was their saviour,
who had done such great things in Egypt,
such portents in the land of Ham,
such marvels at the Red Sea.
Lord, remember us, for the love you bear your people.
For this he said he would destroy them,
but Moses, the man he had chosen,
stood in the breach before him,
to turn back his anger from destruction.
Lord, remember us, for the love you bear your people.
Gospel
John 5:31-47
You place your hopes on Moses but Moses will be your accuser
Jesus said to the Jews:
‘Were I to testify on my own behalf,
my testimony would not be valid;
but there is another witness who can speak on my behalf,
and I know that his testimony is valid.
You sent messengers to John,
and he gave his testimony to the truth:
not that I depend on human testimony;
no, it is for your salvation that I speak of this.
John was a lamp alight and shining
and for a time you were content to enjoy the light that he gave.
But my testimony is greater than John’s:
the works my Father has given me to carry out,
these same works of mine testify
that the Father has sent me.
Besides, the Father who sent me
bears witness to me himself.
You have never heard his voice,
you have never seen his shape,
and his word finds no home in you
because you do not believe in the one he has sent.
‘You study the scriptures,
believing that in them you have eternal life;
now these same scriptures testify to me,
and yet you refuse to come to me for life!
As for human approval, this means nothing to me.
Besides, I know you too well: you have no love of God in you.
I have come in the name of my Father
and you refuse to accept me;
if someone else comes in his own name
you will accept him.
How can you believe,
since you look to one another for approval
and are not concerned
with the approval that comes from the one God?
Do not imagine that I am going to accuse you before the Father:
you place your hopes on Moses,
and Moses will be your accuser.
If you really believed him
you would believe me too,
since it was I that he was writing about;
but if you refuse to believe what he wrote,
how can you believe what I say?’
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