Dear Brothers and Sisters,

This Sunday’s Gospel describes the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves that Jesus worked for a great throng of people who had followed him to listen to him and to be healed of various illnesses (cf. Mt 14:14).

As evening fell the disciples suggested to Jesus that he send the crowds away so that they might take some refreshment. But the Lord had something else in mind: “You give them something to eat” (Mt 14:16). However they had “only five loaves... and two fish”. Jesus’ subsequent action evokes the sacrament of the Eucharist: “He looked up to heaven, and blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds” (Mt 14:19).

The miracle consists in the brotherly sharing of a few loaves which, entrusted to the power of God, not only sufficed for everyone but enough was left over to fill 12 baskets. The Lord asked this of the disciples so that it would be they who distributed the bread to the multitude; in this way he taught and prepared them for their future apostolic mission: in fact, they were to bring to all the nourishment of the Word of life and of the sacraments.

In this miraculous sign the incarnation of God and the work of redemption are interwoven. Jesus, in fact, “went ashore” from the boat to meet the men and women (cf. Mt 14:14). St Maximus the Confessor said that the Word of God made himself present for our sake, by taking flesh, derived from us and conformed to us in all things save sin, in order to expose us to his teaching with words and examples suitable for us” (Ambigua 33: PG 91, 1285 C).

Here the Lord offers us an eloquent example of his compassion for people. We are reminded of all our brothers and sisters in the Horn of Africa who in these days are suffering the dramatic consequences of famine, exacerbated by war and by the lack of solid institutions. Christ is attentive to material needs but he wished to give more, because man always “hungers for more, he needs more” (Jesus of Nazareth, Doubleday, New York 2007, p. 267 (English translation). God’s love is present in the bread of Christ; in the encounter with him “we feed on the living God himself, so to speak, we truly eat the ‘bread from Heaven’” (ibid. p. 268).

Dear friends. “in the Eucharist Jesus also makes us witnesses of God’s compassion towards all our brothers and sisters. The Eucharistic mystery thus gives rise to a service of charity towards neighbour” (Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, n. 88).

[Pope Benedict, Angelus 31 July 2011]

“How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?"

Before the multitude which has followed him from the shores of the Sea of Galilee to the mountains in order to listen to his word, Jesus begins, with this question, the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves. This is the significant prelude to the long speech in which he reveals himself to the world as the real Bread of life which came down from heaven (cf. Jn 6:41).

1. We have listened to the evangelical narration: with five barley loaves and two fish, offered by a boy, Jesus feeds about five thousand people. But the latter, not understanding the depth of the "sign" in which they have been involved, are convinced that they have at last found the King-Messiah, who will solve the political and economic problems of their nation. Before this obtuse misunderstanding of his mission, Jesus withdraws, all alone, to the mountains.

We, too, beloved Brothers and Sisters, have followed Jesus and continue to follow him. But we can and must ask ourselves "With what interior attitude?" With the true one of faith, which Jesus expected of the Apostles and of the multitude that he had fed, or with an attitude of incomprehension? Jesus presented himself on that occasion like, in fact more than, Moses who had fed the people of Israel in the desert during the Exodus. He presented himself like, in fact more than, Elisha, who had fed a hundred persons with twenty loaves of barley and grain. Jesus manifested himself, and manifests himself to us today, as the One who is capable of satisfying for ever the hunger of our hearts: "I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst." (Jn 6:33)

And man, especially modern man, is so hungry: hungry for truth, justice, love, peace, beauty; but, above all, hungry for God. "We must hunger for God!", St Augustine exclaims ("famelici Dei esse debemus": Enarrat. in psal. 146, n. 17,: PL 37, 1895 f.). It is he, the heavenly Father, who gives us the true bread!

2. This bread, which we need, is first and foremost Christ, who gives himself to us in the sacramental signs of the Eucharist, and makes us hear, at every Mass, the words of the last Supper: "Take and eat, all of you: this is my body offered in sacrifice for you." In the sacrament of the eucharistic bread—the Second Vatican Council affirms —"the unity of all believers who form one body in Christ (cf. I Cor 10:17) is both expressed and brought about. All men are called to this union with Christ, who is the light of the world, from whom we go forth, through whom we live, and toward whom our journey leads us." (Lumen Gentium, 3.)

The bread that we need is, moreover, the Word of God, because "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3). Certainly, men, too, can express and utter words of high value. But history shows us how the words of men are sometimes insufficient, ambiguous, disappointing, biased; while the Word of God is full of truth (cf. 2 Sam 7:28; 1 Cor 17:26); it is upright (Psalms 33:4); it is stable and remains for ever (cf. Psalms 119:89; 1 Pet 1:25).

We must listen religiously to this Word continually; assume it as the criterion of our way of thinking and acting; get to know it, by means of assiduous reading and personal meditation; but especially, we must day after day, in all our behaviour, make it ours, put it into practice,

The bread we need, finally, is grace; and we must invoke it, ask for it with sincere humility and tireless constancy, well aware that it is the most precious thing we can possess.

3. The path of our life, laid out for us by God's providential love, is a mysterious one, sometimes incomprehensible on the human plane, and nearly always hard and difficult. But the Father gives us the bread from heaven" (cf. In 6:32), to encourage us in our pilgrimage on earth.

I am happy to conclude with a passage from St Augustine, which sums up admirably that upon which we have meditated: "We can understand very well... how your Eucharist is daily food. The faithful know, in fact, what they receive and it is good that they should receive the daily bread necessary for this time. They pray for themselves, to become good, to be persevering in goodness, faith, and a good life... the Word of God, which is explained to us and, in a certain sense, broken, every day, is also daily bread" (Sermo 58, IV: PL 38, 395).

May Christ Jesus always multiply his bread, also for us!

Amen!

[Pope John Paul II, homily 29 July 1979]

The Gospel [...] presents to us the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves (see Mt 14,13-21). The scene takes place in a deserted place, where Jesus had retired with His disciples. But the people found Him so as to listen to Him and to be healed: indeed, His words and His gestures restore and bring hope. At sundown, the crowd was still present and the disciples, practical men, invited Jesus to send them away so that they could go and find something to eat. But He answered: “You give them something to eat” (v. 16). We can imagine the disciples’ faces! Jesus was well aware of what He was about to do, but He wanted to change their attitude: not to say, “send them away,” “let them fend for themselves”, “let them find something to eat”, but rather, “what does Providence offer us to share?” These are two opposite ways of behaving. And Jesus wants to bring them to the second way of behaving because the first proposal is that of the practical person, but is not generous: “send them away so they can go and find, let them fend for themselves.” Jesus thinks another way. Jesus wants to use this situation to educate His friends, both then and now, about God’s logic. And what is God’s logic that we see here? The logic of taking responsibility for others. The logic of not washing one’s hands, the logic of not looking the other way. No. The logic of taking responsibility for others. That “let them fend for themselves” should not enter into the Christian vocabulary.

As soon as one of the Twelve says, realistically, “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish”, Jesus answers, “Bring them here to me” (vv. 17-18). He takes the food in His hands, raises His eyes heavenward, recites the blessing and begins to break it and  give the pieces to the disciples to hand out. And those loaves and fish did not run out; there was enough, and plenty left over for thousands of people.

With this gesture, Jesus demonstrates His power; not in a spectacular way but as a sign of charity, of God the Father’s generosity toward His weary and needy children. He is immersed in the life of His people, He understands their fatigue and their limitations, but He does not allow anyone to be lost, or to lose out: He nourishes them with His word and provides food in plenty for sustenance.

In this Gospel passage we can perceive a reference to the Eucharist, especially in the description of the blessing, the breaking of the bread, delivery to the disciples, and distribution to the people (v. 19). It is noteworthy how close the link is between the Eucharistic bread, nourishment for eternal life, and daily bread, necessary for earthly life. Before offering Himself to the Father as the Bread of salvation, Jesus ensures there is food for those who follow Him and who, in order to be with Him, forgot to make provisions. At times the spiritual and the material are in opposition, but in reality spiritualism, like materialism, is alien to the Bible. It is not biblical language.

The compassion and tenderness that Jesus showed towards the crowds is not sentimentality, but rather the concrete manifestation of the love that cares for the people’s needs. And we are called to approach the Eucharistic table with these same attitudes of Jesus: compassion for the needs of others, this word that is repeated in the Gospel when Jesus sees a problem, an illness or these people without food… “He had compassion.” “He had compassion”. Compassion is not a purely material feeling; true compassion is patire con [to suffer with], to take others’ sorrows on ourselves. Perhaps it would do us good today to ask ourselves: Do I feel compassion when I read news about war, about hunger, about the pandemic? So many things… Do I feel compassion toward those people? Do I feel compassion toward the people who are near to me? Am I capable of suffering with them, or do I look the other way, or “they can fend for themselves”? Let us not forget this word “compassion,” which is trust in the provident love of the Father, and means courageous sharing.

May Mary Most Holy help us to walk the path that the Lord shows us in today's Gospel. It is the journey of fraternity, which is essential in order to face the poverty and suffering of this world, especially in this tragic moment, and which projects us beyond the world itself, because it is a journey that begins with God and returns to God.

[Pope Francis, Angelus 2 August 2020]

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time (year C) [27 July 2025]

May God bless us and the Virgin protect us! This time I have taken a little longer to present some important details of the readings in the NOTES, which are useful for personal meditation and for lectio divina during this holiday period.

*First Reading from the Book of Genesis (18:20-32)

This text marks a step forward in the idea that men have of their relationship with God: it is the first time that one dares to imagine that a man can intervene in God's plans. Unfortunately, the liturgical reading does not allow us to hear the previous verses in which we read that immediately after the encounter at the Oaks of Mamre, Abraham takes his leave, accompanying the three mysterious men to contemplate Sodom from above. The Lord, speaking to himself, says: 'Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, when Abraham is to become a great and powerful nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed in him?' (vv. 17-19). God takes the covenant he has just made very seriously, and it is here that what we might call 'the most beautiful negotiation in history' begins: Abraham, armed with all his courage, intercedes to try to save Sodom and Gomorrah from a punishment they certainly deserve. In essence, he asks if God really wants to destroy these cities even if he finds at least fifty righteous people, or only forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, ten. What audacity! Yet, apparently, God accepts that man should act as his interlocutor: at no point does the Lord seem impatient and, indeed, he responds each time exactly as Abraham hoped. Perhaps God appreciates that Abraham has such a high opinion of his justice. In this regard, it can be noted that this text was written at a time when people were beginning to become aware of individual responsibility: in fact, Abraham would be scandalised by the idea that the righteous could be punished together with sinners and for their sins. We are far from the time when an entire family was eliminated for the sins of one. The great discovery of individual responsibility dates back to the prophet Ezekiel and the period of the Babylonian exile, i.e. the 6th century BC. We can therefore formulate a hypothesis about the composition of the chapter read today and last Sunday: it is a text written at a rather late date, although it derives from perhaps much older stories, whose oral or written form was not yet definitive. God loves it when people intercede for their brothers and sisters, as we can see with Moses: when the people made a 'golden calf' to worship immediately after swearing never to follow idols again. Moses intervened to beg God to forgive them, and God, who was waiting for nothing else, hastened to forgive them (Ex 32). Moses interceded for the people for whom he was responsible; Abraham, on the other hand, intercedes for pagans, and this is logical, after all, since he is the bearer of a blessing for all the families of the earth. This text is a great step forward in discovering the face of God, but it is only a stage, still within a logic of accounting: how many righteous people will it take to obtain forgiveness for sinners? The final theological step will be to discover that with God it is never a matter of payment. His justice has nothing to do with a scale, whose two pans must be perfectly balanced, and this is what St. Paul will try to make us understand in this Sunday's passage from the Letter to the Colossians. This text from Genesis is also a beautiful lesson on prayer, which is offered to us on the day when Luke's Gospel recounts Jesus' teaching on prayer, beginning with the Our Father, the plural prayer par excellence, which invites us to open our hearts to the whole of humanity. 

NOTE: Development of the notion of God's justice in the Bible: In the beginning, it was considered normal for the whole group to pay for the fault of one: see the case of Achan in the time of Joshua (Joshua 7:16-25). In a second phase, it is imagined that each person pays for himself. Here, there is a new step forward: if ten righteous people are found, they can save an entire city. Jeremiah dares to go further: a single righteous person can obtain forgiveness for all: 'Go through the streets of Jerusalem, search for one man who acts justly... I will forgive the city' (Jer 5:1). Ezekiel also reasons in these terms: 'I sought for a man among them who would stand in the breach before me... but I found none' (Ezek 22:30). It is with the book of Job, among others, that the final step is taken: when it is finally understood that God's justice is synonymous with salvation, not punishment. Jeremiah even goes so far as to invoke unconditional forgiveness, based solely on God's greatness: "If our sins testify against us, act, Lord, for the honour of your name!" (Jer 14:7-9). Before God, just like Jeremiah, Abraham understood that sinners have no other argument than God himself! Finally, note Abraham's optimism, which fully earns him the title of "father of faith": he continues to believe that all is not lost, that not all are lost. Even in a city as horrible as Sodom, he is convinced that there are at least ten good men!

Responsorial Psalm (137/138), 1-2a, 2bc-3, 6-7ab, 7c-8)

This psalm is a song of thanksgiving for the Covenant that God offers to humanity: the Covenant made first with Israel, but also the Covenant open to all nations, and Israel's vocation is precisely to bring other nations into it. Three times 

: 'I give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart', 'I give thanks to your name for your love and your faithfulness', and – in verse 4, which we do not hear this Sunday – 'May all the kings of the earth give thanks to you'. Here we see a progression: first, it is Israel speaking on its own behalf: "I give you thanks, Lord, with all my heart"; then the reason is specified: "I give thanks to your name for your love and your faithfulness"; finally, it is the whole of humanity that enters into the Covenant and gives thanks: "May all the kings of the earth give thanks to you". 

Since we are talking about the Covenant, it is normal that there are allusions to the experience of Sinai and echoes of the great discovery of the burning bush when God told Moses that he had seen the misery of his people and had come down to free them (Ex 2:23-24). Echoing this, the psalm sings: "On the day I called, you answered me" (v. 3). Another reference to God's revelation at Sinai is the expression "your love and faithfulness" (v. 2): these are the same words with which God defined himself before Moses (Ex 34:6). The phrase "Your right hand saves me" (v. 7) is, for Jews, an allusion to the exodus from Egypt. The "right hand" is, of course, the right hand, and since Moses' song after the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea (Ex 15), it has become customary to speak of the victory that God obtained with a strong hand and a powerful arm (Ex 15:6, 12). The expression "Lord, your love is forever" (v. 8) also evokes all of God's work, particularly the Exodus, as in Psalm 135/136, whose refrain is: "For his love is forever." Another link between this psalm and Moses' song is the connection between the entire epic of the Exodus, the Covenant at Sinai, and the Temple in Jerusalem. Moses sang:

"The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him" (Ex 15:1-2, 13), and the psalm echoes:

"Not to the gods, but to you I will sing, I bow down toward your holy temple" (vv. 1-2) because the

Temple is the place where all God's work on behalf of his people is remembered. However, God's presence is not limited to a stone temple, but that temple, or what remains of it, is a permanent sign of that presence. And even today, wherever they are in the world, every Jew prays facing Jerusalem, towards the holy temple mountain, because it is the place chosen by God, in the time of King David, to offer his people a sign of his presence. Finally, God's greatness does not crush man, at least not those who recognise their own smallness: "The Lord is exalted, but he looks upon the humble; he recognises the proud from afar" (v. 6). This too is a great biblical theme: his greatness is manifested precisely in his goodness towards the smallness of man (cf. Wis 12:18) and Psalm 113/112: "He raises the weak from the dust, lifts the poor from the ash heap" and in the Magnificat: "He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the humble". The believer knows this and is amazed: God is great, he does not crush us, but on the contrary, he makes us grow.

These parallels, that is, the influence of Moses' song, the experience of Sinai from the burning bush to the exodus from Egypt and the Covenant, are found in many other psalms and biblical texts.

This shows how much this experience was – and remains – the foundation of Israel's faith.

Second Reading from the Letter of Saint Paul to the Colossians (2:12-14)

God has cancelled the document written against us (Col 2:14). Paul here refers to a widespread practice when money was borrowed: it was customary for the debtor to give the creditor a 'debt acknowledgement document'. Jesus also used this image in the parable of the dishonest steward. On the day his master threatens to fire him, he thinks of making friends for himself; to this end, he summons his master's debtors and says to each one, 'Here is your debt document; change the amount. Did you owe a hundred sacks of wheat? Write eighty' (Lk 16:7). As he often does, Paul uses the language of everyday life to express a theological thought. His reasoning is this: because of the seriousness of our sins, we can consider ourselves debtors to God. Moreover, in Judaism, sins were often called "debts"; and a Jewish prayer from the time of Jesus said: "In your great mercy, cancel all the documents that accuse us." Well, anyone who looks up at the cross of Christ discovers the extent of God's mercy for his children: with Him, it is not a matter of keeping accounts: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do' is the prayer of the Son; but it is He himself who said, 'Whoever has seen me has seen the Father'. The body of Christ nailed to the cross shows that God is like this: He forgets all our wrongs, all our faults towards Him. His forgiveness is displayed before our eyes: "They will look on him whom they have pierced," said the prophet Zechariah (Zech 12:10; Jn 19:37). It is as if the document of our debt had been nailed to the cross of Christ. However, we are still surprised because this whole passage is written in the past tense: "buried with Christ in baptism, you have also been raised with him... with him God has given you life... forgiving us all our sins and cancelling the document written against us... he took it away by nailing it to the cross". 

NOTE Paul wants to affirm that the salvation of the world is already accomplished: this 'already-realised' salvation is one of the great themes of the Letter to the Colossians. The Christian community is already saved through baptism; it already participates in the heavenly reality. Here too we see an evolution with respect to some of Paul's earlier letters, such as 'We have been saved, but in hope' (Rom 8:24); "If we have been united with him in death, we will also be united with him in resurrection" (Rom 6:5). While the Letter to the Romans places the resurrection in the future, the Letters to the Colossians and Ephesians speak in the past tense, both of burial with Christ and of resurrection as an already present reality. “When we were dead in our sins, he made us alive with Christ – by grace you are saved –; with him he raised us up and seated us in the heavens in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:5-6). “You were buried with Christ, with him you were also raised... You were dead... but God gave you life with Christ.” For Paul, baptism is like a second birth, and his insistence that salvation has already taken place through birth into a totally new life is probably also linked to the historical context: behind many expressions in the Letter, we can glimpse a climate of tension and conflict. The community in Colossae seems to be under dangerous influences, against which Paul wants to warn them: "Let no one deceive you with seductive words" (Col 2:4)... "Let no one trap you with empty and deceptive philosophy" (Col 2:8)... "Let no one judge you in matters of food and drink, or in regard to festivals or sabbaths" (Col 2:16). Thus, a recurring problem reappears in the background: how does one enter into salvation? Must one continue to strictly observe all Jewish law? Paul answers: through faith. This theme is present in many letters, and we find it clearly here as well (v. 12): buried in baptism with Christ... raised... through faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead. The Letter to the Ephesians repeats it even more clearly: 'It is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. It is not the result of works, so that no one can boast.' (Eph 2:8-9) Life with Christ in the glory of the Father is not only a future hope, but a present experience of believers: an experience of new life, of divine life. From now on, if we want, Christ lives in us; and we are enabled to live the divine life of the risen Christ in our daily lives! This means that none of our old ways of acting is any longer an inevitable condemnation. Love, peace, justice, and sharing are possible. And if we do not believe this is possible, then we are saying that Christ has not saved us! Be careful! Until now, we have always spoken of the Letter to the Colossians as if Paul were the author; in reality, many exegetes believe that it was written by a disciple very close to Paul, inspired by his thought, but from a later generation. 

From the Gospel according to Luke (11:1-13)

It may come as a surprise, but Jesus did not invent the words of the Lord's Prayer: they come directly from Jewish liturgy and, more profoundly, from the Scriptures. Starting with the vocabulary, which is very biblical: Father, name, holy, kingdom, bread, sins, temptations... Let us begin with the first two questions: with great pedagogical skill, they are addressed first of all to God and teach us to say 'your name', 'your kingdom'. They educate our desire and commit us to collaborate in the growth of his kingdom. The Our Father, probably taught by Jesus in Aramaic, 'Abun d'bashmaya... nethqadash shimukin', which recalls liturgical Hebrew, is a school of prayer, or if you prefer, a method for learning to pray: let us not forget the disciple's request that immediately precedes it: 'Lord, teach us to pray' (v. 1). Well, if we follow Jesus' method, thanks to the Lord's Prayer, we will end up knowing how to speak the language of God, whose first word is Father. The invocation 'Our Father' immediately places us in a filial relationship with God and was already present in the Old Testament: 'You, Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from everlasting'. (Is 63:16). The first two questions concern the name and the kingdom. "Hallowed be thy name": in the Bible, the name represents the person himself; to say that God is holy (kadosh / shmokh in Aramaic - separate) is to affirm that He is "beyond everything, and this request means: "Make yourself known as God". "Thy kingdom come": repeated every day, this question will transform us into workers in the Kingdom. God's will, as we know, is that humanity, gathered in his love, should become queen of creation: 'Fill the earth and subdue it' (Gen 1:27), and believers await the day when God will be recognised as king over all the earth, as the prophet Zechariah announced: 'The Lord will be king over all the earth' (Zech 14:9). Our prayer, our method of learning the language of God, will make us people who desire above all else that God be recognised, adored and loved, that everyone recognise him as Father, passionate about evangelisation and the Kingdom of God. The next three questions concern daily life: "Give us", "Forgive us", "Do not abandon us to temptation". God never ceases to do all this, and we place ourselves in an attitude of acceptance of his gifts. "Give us this day our daily bread" (τὸν ἐπιούσιον): the manna that fell every morning in the desert taught the people to trust day by day, and this request invites us not to worry about tomorrow and to receive food each day as a gift from God: here bread has various meanings, including the Eucharistic bread, as I will explain in the Note, and the plural "our bread" invites us to share the Father's concern to feed all his children. "Forgive us our sins, for we too forgive everyone who is indebted to us": God's forgiveness is not conditioned by our behaviour, and fraternal forgiveness does not buy God's forgiveness, but is the only way to enter into the divine forgiveness that is already given: those who have a closed heart cannot receive God's gifts. "Do not abandon us to temptation." Here there is a translation problem, because – once again – Hebrew grammar is different from ours: the verb used in the Hebrew prayer means "do not let us enter into temptation." This refers to every temptation, of course, but above all to the most serious one, the temptation to doubt God's love. The whole of life is involved in the Lord's Prayer: speaking the language of God means knowing how to ask, and asking is not only permitted but recommended because it is an exercise in humility and trust. Nor are these just any requests: bread, forgiveness, strength against temptation. All the requests are in the plural, and each of us makes them on behalf of the whole of humanity. Ultimately, there is a close connection between the first petitions of the Lord's Prayer and the subsequent ones: we ask God for what we need to fulfil our baptismal mission: Give us all we need – bread and love – and protect us, so that we may have the strength to proclaim your Kingdom. The Gospel immediately follows with the parable of the importunate friend who invites us never to stop praying, certain that the heavenly Father always gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask him (v. 13), so that even if our problems are not solved with a wave of a magic wand, we will no longer experience them alone but together with Him.

NOTE 

1 – Regarding 'bread' in verse 3: the same adjective is found in a prayer in the Book of Proverbs: 'Give me neither poverty nor riches; give me only my daily bread' (Pr 30:8).  

2 The term bread τὸν ἐπιούσιον, a very rare adjective, is a hapax legomenon, i.e. it appears only here (and in Mt 6:11), and is not found elsewhere in classical Greek literature or in the LXX (Septuagint). There are many interpretations, but ἐπιούσιος remains enigmatic and carries with it a wealth of meanings: the material bread necessary for daily life; spiritual bread, that is, the Word of God and the Eucharist, the sign of daily trust in the Providence of the Father. Some exegetes read it as 'bread for the day that is coming', thus a confident invocation for the immediate future. 

3. Jesus takes the Our Father directly from the Jewish liturgy, and here are some Jewish prayers that are at its origin: 'Our Father who art in heaven' (Mishnah Yoma, common invocation); 'May your name be sanctified in the world you have created according to your will' (Qaddish, Qedushah and Shemoné Esré); May your kingdom come quickly and be recognised throughout the world... May your will be done in heaven and on earth... Give us our daily bread...

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us... Lead us not into temptation... Yours is the greatness, the power, the glory... (1 Chr 29:11)

4. The final doxology of the Lord's Prayer: Many Christian groups, well before the Second Vatican Council, recited at the end of the Lord's Prayer: Yours is the kingdom, yours is the power and glory forever. This "doxology" (word of praise) is found in some manuscripts of Matthew, and is probably derived from a very ancient liturgical use, already in the first century, but dating back even further, to David's prayer (cf. Chronicles 29:11).

5. On the importance of prayers of petition, I echo an interesting image proposed by Duns Scotus: imagine a boat on the sea; on the shore there is a rock, on which there is a ring, and another ring on the boat, tied together with a rope The man who prays is like someone in the boat pulling on the rope: he does not pull the rock towards himself, but brings himself – and the boat – closer to the rock.

+ Giovanni D'Ercole

16th Sunday in O.T. (year C) [20 July 2025]

May God bless us and the Virgin protect us! For those who can, summer is a time when we can devote more time to listening to the Word and praying for those who are so immersed in their worries that they believe they have no time to pray.

*First Reading from the Book of Genesis (18:1-10)

Mambré is an inhabitant of the land of Canaan who, on several occasions, offered hospitality to Abraham in his oak grove (near the present-day city of Hebron). We know that oak trees were sacred to the Canaanites. This story recounts an apparition of God in the grove belonging to Mambré. But, in reality, this is not the first time that God has spoken to Abraham. Since chapter 12, the book of Genesis has told us about God's repeated appearances and promises to Abraham. But, for the moment, nothing has happened yet, and Abraham and Sarah are about to die without children. It is often said that God chose a people, but in reality, God first chose a man—and, moreover, a man without children. And it was to this man without a future (at least according to human criteria) that God made an unprecedented promise: "I will make you a great nation... All the families of the earth will be blessed in you" (Gen 12:2-3). To this old, sterile man, he said: "Count the stars, if you can... So shall your descendants be." Based solely on this seemingly impossible promise, Abraham decided to stake his entire life. Abraham did not doubt that God would keep his word, but he was well aware of the obvious obstacle: he and Sarah were sterile, or at least they believed themselves to be, since at the ages of seventy-five and sixty-five they were still childless. Abraham had imagined solutions: God promised me descendants, but, after all, my servant is like a son to me. "Lord God, what will you give me? I am going away childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus" (Gen 15:2). But God refused: 'This man shall not be your heir, but one born to you shall be your heir' (Gen 15:4). A few years later, when God spoke again of that birth, Abraham could not help but laugh (Gen 17:17); then he thought of another solution: it could be my real son, Ishmael, the one I had from my union (authorised by Sarah) with Hagar. "Can a man of a hundred years old have a son? And can Sarah, who is ninety years old, still give birth? ... May Ishmael live before you!" But once again God refused: "No! Your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you shall call him Isaac" (Gen 17:19). A promise is a promise. The passage we read this Sunday presupposes this long history of a twenty-five-year covenant, according to the Bible. The event takes place near the oak of Mamre. Three men appeared to Abraham and accepted his hospitality. Let us stop here. Contrary to what one might think, the central point of the text is not the generous hospitality offered by Abraham! At that time, in that civilisation, it was nothing extraordinary, however exemplary it might have been. The author's message, what arouses his admiration and prompts him to write in order to pass it on to future generations, is much greater! The unthinkable has happened: for the first time in human history, God himself has become a guest of a man! No one doubts that the three distinguished visitors represent God. Reading the text is a little difficult for us, because it is not clear whether there is only one visitor or more than one: Abraham looked up and saw three men... he said: My Lord, if I have found favour in your eyes... go and fetch some water, wash your feet... I will fetch a morsel of bread and you can refresh yourselves... Where is Sarah, your wife? I will return to you in a year's time... your wife will have a son. In reality, the author wrote this much later, based on different accounts. He combined all these sources into one, harmonising everything as much as possible. And because he wanted to avoid any appearance of polytheism, he took care to reiterate several times that there is only one God. At the time, the author could not have imagined that this was the Trinity, but Abraham certainly recognised the divine presence in those three visitors without hesitation. God, therefore – for it is undoubtedly Him – made Himself a guest in Abraham's house. And to tell him what? To confirm the unheard-of plan He had for him: next year, at this same time, old Sarah will have a son. And from this son would be born a people who would be the instrument of divine blessing. Sarah, who was eavesdropping behind the curtain, could not help but laugh: they were both so old, and the traveller replied with a phrase that we should never forget: 'Is anything too hard for the Lord?' (Gen 18:14). And the impossible happened: Isaac was born, the first link in the promised lineage, as numerous as the stars in the sky.

*Responsorial Psalm (14/15, 1a. 2-3a, 3bc-4ab, 4d-5)

The psalms were all composed to accompany a liturgical action during pilgrimages and feasts at the Temple in Jerusalem, and the Psalter could be compared to the hymnals we find in our churches. Here, the pilgrim arrives at the gates of the Temple and asks the question: am I worthy to enter? The answer is found in the Book of Leviticus: 'Be holy, because I am holy' (19:2), and this psalm draws the consequences: those who wish to enter the Temple (the 'house' of God) must behave in a manner worthy of the holy God. 'Who shall dwell on your holy mountain? (v. 1) The answer is simple: "He who walks blamelessly, practises justice and speaks the truth that is in his heart" (v. 2), and the following verses clarify this: be righteous, be true, do no wrong to anyone. Ultimately, all this recalls the Decalogue (Ex 20) and the identikit of the righteous man drawn up by Ezekiel (Ez 18:5-9). Micah takes up the question of our psalm exactly and develops it (Mic 6:6-8), as does his contemporary Isaiah (Is 33:15-16). A little later, Zechariah also feels the need to repeat it (Zech 8:16-17). Reading these texts, which I am only mentioning but which are worth meditating on, we understand how essential it is to wait for the intervention of the One who can transform our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, as Ezekiel says. Everything helps us to reread this psalm by applying it to Jesus, whom the Gospels describe as 'meek and humble of heart' (Mt 11:29), attentive to the excluded: lepers (Mk 1), the adulterous woman (Jn 8), the sick and demon-possessed, Jews and pagans. Jesus is completely foreign to the logic of profit and does not even have a place to lay his head. Jesus helps us to re-read verse 3: "He does not slander with his tongue, he does not harm his neighbour, he does not cast insults at his neighbour," giving it a new dimension and teaching us in the parable of the Good Samaritan that the circle of our "neighbours" can be expanded to infinity. Verse 4: "The wicked are despicable in his eyes" may seem out of place amid all these beautiful sentiments: but it probably indicates a commitment to fidelity because the "wicked" are the unfaithful, the idolaters, and the pilgrim must reject all forms of idolatry, for which reason fidelity to the one God has been a constant struggle in Israel. Finally, the reference to the demands of the Covenant is a catechesis addressed to pilgrims, not a condition for entering the Temple, because otherwise no one could ever have entered except Jesus of Nazareth, the only Holy One.

*Second Reading from the Letter of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Colossians (1:24-28)

"I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church." How are we to understand the first sentence of this text? Is there something lacking in Christ's sufferings? Or are there other sufferings that we must endure in order to "compensate" in some way? In truth, there are still sufferings to endure, as Paul affirms, but it is not a matter of completing a measure. It is not the result of a divine demand, but rather a necessity due to the hardness of the human heart. What remains to be suffered are the difficulties, opposition, and even persecution that every work of evangelisation encounters. Jesus said this clearly, both before and after his Passion and Resurrection. If the Son of Man had to suffer greatly, rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, put to death and rise again on the third day (cf. Lk 9:22), a similar fate would befall his disciples: They will deliver you to courts and synagogues, you will be beaten, you will appear before governors and kings because of me, and this will be an opportunity for you to bear witness, but first, the Gospel must be proclaimed to all nations (cf. Mk 13:9-10). The warning is that until the mission is accomplished, the disciple must continue to labour, face difficulties, even persecution, certainly not by divine decree, as if God desired the suffering of his children and counted their tears, because such an assumption would distort the image of the God of tenderness and compassion that Moses himself had already discovered. For Paul, there are two characteristics that qualify the disciple of Christ: imitation of the suffering divine Master and proclamation of the 'mystery' (v. 26). The first characteristic is described in this difficult opening verse, and St Augustine applies this participation in the sufferings of Christ to all Christians who suffer so that the whole community may be purified from evil. The second characteristic is proclamation, the missionary commitment whose content is 'the mystery', that is, the plan of salvation revealed in Christ. For the work of evangelisation, God calls collaborators because he does not want to act without us. However, the world refuses to listen to the Word and resists with all its might the spread of the Gospel, an opposition that goes as far as persecuting and suppressing the martyrs, who are inconvenient witnesses. This is exactly what Paul is experiencing, imprisoned for speaking too much about Jesus of Nazareth. In his letters to the young Christian communities, he often encourages his readers to accept, in turn, the inevitable persecution (cf. 1 Thess 3:3). Peter also says the same thing: "Resist, standing firm in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are being experienced by your brothers and sisters throughout the world" (1 Pet 5:9-10).  Therefore, we must not give up and we must proclaim Christ, despite everything, "admonishing everyone and teaching them with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ" (v. 28). Christ began the work of proclamation, and it is our task to bring it to completion. In this way, the Church grows little by little as the Body of Christ. In the First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 12), the image of the body was used to speak of the harmony among the members within each local Church. Here, however, Paul's vision broadens and contemplates the universal Church, the great body of which Christ is the head. This mystery, God's plan, has been revealed to Christians and becomes for them an inexhaustible source of joy and hope: "Christ in you, him, the hope of glory!" (v. 27) and it is the amazement at the presence of Christ in their midst that transforms believers into witnesses. Then we understand better the opening sentence of today's text: I find joy in the sufferings I endure for you, for what is lacking in Christ's sufferings, I complete in my flesh, for the sake of his body, which is the Church.

*From the Gospel according to Luke (10:38-42)

"Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Mt 6:33): this is perhaps the best commentary on Jesus' lesson in the house of Martha and Mary, a story exclusive to the evangelist Luke that immediately follows the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem with his disciples, an opportunity for him to give them many instructions, offering points of reference to help them remain faithful to their vocation to follow him. He first recommended to his disciples on mission that they accept hospitality (cf. Lk 9:4; 10:5-9) and now he willingly enters this house in Bethany, which he knew well. We should avoid contrasting Martha, the active one, with Mary, the contemplative one, because the evangelist seems rather to focus on the disciples' relationship with the Lord, as can be seen from the context and the repetition of the term 'Lord', which appears three times: Mary sat at the Lord's feet... Martha said, 'Lord, don't you care? The Lord answered her... The insistent use of this term indicates that the relationship described by Luke between Jesus and the two sisters, Martha and Mary, should not be judged according to human criteria of 'good behaviour', but according to what the Master wishes to teach his disciples. Here he invites us to discern what is the 'better part', that is, the essential and indispensable attitude in the life and mission of Christians. The two women welcome the Lord with all their attention: Martha is absorbed in many tasks related to serving, Mary entertains the guest by listening to him and does not miss a word. It cannot be said that one is active and the other contemplative: both, in their own way, are totally focused on him. The evangelist focuses on Jesus who is speaking, even though we are not told what he is saying, while Mary, 'sitting at the Lord's feet', listens with the attitude of a disciple, allowing herself to be taught (cf. Is 50). Martha protests: 'Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to serve you alone? Tell her to help me'. And here Jesus utters a phrase that has caused much ink to flow: "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things." Jesus does not reproach Martha for her desire to welcome him well because, in the culture of hospitality (especially in the East), hospitality meant preparing a good meal: "kill the fatted calf." Martha's agitation and restlessness inspire Jesus to give a lesson that is useful for all his disciples because it goes to the heart of the matter: "Only one thing is needed," that is, everything is useful if we do not forget "the better part," that is, the essential. In life, we must all be both Martha and Mary, but we must be careful not to confuse our priorities. Jesus will take up this lesson again later, in a more extensive way (Lk 12:22-32), which, however, the liturgy does not always propose. I would therefore like to recall it here: "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. Life is worth more than food, and the body more than clothing... Now, if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, people of little faith! Therefore, do not seek what you will eat or drink, and do not be anxious. It is the pagans of the world who seek all these things, but your Father knows that you need them. Seek rather his Kingdom, and all the rest will be given to you in addition." Jesus warns us against the risk that our daily concerns will prevent us from listening to his word, which is "the better part". In dedicating ourselves to service like Martha, we must avoid forgetting that it is always God who takes care of us and not the other way around. We can paraphrase Jesus' words as follows: Martha, you are busy and agitated in welcoming me, doing many useful things, but the best way is to know that it is I who want to do things for you, so listen to me.

+ Giovanni D'Ercole

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (year C) [13 July 2025]

May God bless us and the Virgin Mary protect us. Let us live this summer accompanied and guided by the Word of God.

*First Reading from the Book of Deuteronomy (30:10-14)

 The Book of Deuteronomy contains Moses' last speech, a sort of spiritual testament, although it was certainly not written by Moses, since it often repeats: 'Moses said... Moses did'. The author is very solemn in recalling Moses' greatest contribution: bringing Israel out of Egypt and concluding the Covenant with God on Sinai. In this Covenant, God promises to protect his people forever, and the people promise to respect his Law, recognising it as the best guarantee of their newfound freedom. Israel makes this commitment, but it does not often prove faithful. When the Northern Kingdom, destroyed by the Assyrians, disappears from the map, the author invites the inhabitants of the Southern Kingdom, learning from this defeat, to listen to the voice of the Lord, to observe his commands and decrees written in the Torah. For they are neither difficult to understand nor to put into practice: "This commandment which I command you today is not too high for you, nor is it too far away from you" (v. 11).

A question arises: if observing the Law is not difficult, why are God's commandments not put into practice? For Moses, the reason lies in the fact that Israel is "a stiff-necked people": it provoked the Lord's anger in the desert and then rebelled against the Lord from the day it left Egypt until its arrival in the Promised Land (cf. Deut 9:6-7). The expression "stiff-necked" evokes an animal that refuses to bend its neck under the yoke, and the Covenant between God and his people was compared to a ploughing yoke. To recommend obedience to the Law, Ben Sira writes: "Put your neck under the yoke and receive instruction" (Sir 51:26). Jeremiah rebukes Israel for its infidelities to the Law: "For long you have broken my yoke and torn off my bonds" (Jer 2:20; 5:5). And Jesus: "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me... Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light" (Mt 11:29-30). This phrase finds its roots right here in our text from Deuteronomy: "This commandment which I command you today is not too high for you, nor is it too far away from you" (v. 11). Both in Deuteronomy and in the Gospel, the positive message of the Bible emerges: the divine law is within our reach and evil is not irremediable, so that if humanity walks towards salvation, which consists in loving God and neighbour, it experiences happiness. Yet experience shows that living a life in accordance with God's plan is impossible for human beings when they rely solely on their own strength. But if this is impossible for men, everything is possible for God (cf. Mt 19:26) who, as we read in this text, transforms our 'stiff neck' and changes our heart: he 'will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, so that you may love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and live' (Dt 30:6).. Circumcision of the heart means the adherence of our whole being to God's will, which is possible, as the prophets, especially Jeremiah and Ezekiel, note, only through God's direct intervention: "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jer 31:33).

*Responsorial Psalm 18/19

Obedience to the Law is a path to the true Promised Land, and this psalm seems like a litany in honour of the Law: "the law of the Lord", "the precepts of the Lord", "the commandment of the Lord", "the judgments of the Lord". The Lord chose his people, freed them and offered them his Covenant to accompany them throughout their existence, educating them through observance of the Torah. We must not forget that, before anything else, the Jewish people experienced being freed by their God. The Law and the commandments are therefore placed in the perspective of the exodus from Egypt: they are an undertaking of liberation from all the chains that prevent man from being happy, and it is an eternal Covenant. The book of Deuteronomy insists on this point: 'Hear, O Israel, and keep and do them, for then you will find happiness' (Deut 6:3). And our psalm echoes this: 'The precepts of the Lord are upright, they are joy to the heart'. The great certainty acquired by the men of the Bible is that God wants man to be happy and offers him a very simple means to achieve this, for it is enough to listen to his Word written in the Law: "The commandment of the Lord is clear, it enlightens the eyes." The path is marked out, the commandments are like road signs indicating possible dangers, and the Law is our teacher: after all, the root of the word Torah in Hebrew means first and foremost to teach. There is no other requirement and there is no other way to be happy: "The judgments of the Lord are all just, more precious than gold, sweeter than honey." If for us, as for the psalmist, gold is a metal that is both incorruptible and precious, and therefore desirable, honey does not evoke for us what it represented for an inhabitant of Palestine. When God calls Moses and entrusts him with the mission of freeing his people, he promises him: 'I will bring you out of the misery of Egypt... to a land flowing with milk and honey' (Ex 3:17). This very ancient expression characterises abundance and sweetness. Honey, of course, is also found elsewhere, even in the desert where John the Baptist fed on locusts and wild honey (cf. Mt 3:4), but it remains a rarity, and this is precisely what makes the Promised Land so wonderful, where the presence of honey indicates the sweetness of God's action, who took the initiative to save his people, simply out of love. For this reason, from now on there will be no more talk of the onions of Egypt, but of the honey of Canaan, and Israel is certain that God will save it because, as the psalm begins, 'the law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple'.

*Second Reading from the Letter of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Colossians (1:15-20)

I will begin by paraphrasing the last sentence, which is perhaps the most difficult for us: God has decided to reconcile everything to himself through Christ, making peace for all beings on earth and in heaven through the blood of his cross (vv. 19-20). Paul here compares Christ's death to a sacrifice such as those that were habitually offered in the temple in Jerusalem. In particular, there were sacrifices called 'sacrifices of communion' or 'sacrifices of peace'. Paul knows well that those who condemned Jesus certainly did not intend to offer a sacrifice, both because human sacrifices no longer existed in Israel and because Jesus was condemned to death as a criminal and was executed outside the city of Jerusalem. Paul contemplates something unheard of here: in his grace, God has transformed the horrible passion inflicted on his Son by men into a work of peace. In other words, the human hatred that kills Christ, in a mysterious reversal wrought by divine grace, becomes an instrument of reconciliation and pacification because we finally know God as he is: God is pure love and forgiveness.  This discovery can transform our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh (cf. Ezekiel), if we allow his Spirit to act in us. In this letter to the Colossians, we find the same meditation that we find in John's Gospel, inspired by the words of the prophet Zechariah: "I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced... they will mourn for him bitterly' (Zechariah 12:10). When we contemplate the cross, our conversion and reconciliation can arise from this contemplation. In Christ on the cross, we contemplate man as God wanted him to be, and we discover in the pierced Jesus the righteous man par excellence, the perfect image of God. This is why Paul speaks of fullness, in the sense of fulfilment: "It pleased God to have all his fullness dwell in him". Let us now return to the beginning of the text: "Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible... All things were created through him and for him." In Jesus we contemplate God himself; in Jesus Christ, God allows himself to be seen or, to put it another way, Jesus is the visibility of the Father: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father," he himself says in the Gospel of John (Jn 14:9). Contemplating Christ, we contemplate man; contemplating Christ, we contemplate God. There remains one more fundamental verse: "He is also the head of the body, the Church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have firstness in everything" (v. 18). This is perhaps the text of the New Testament where it is stated most clearly that we are the Body of Christ, that is, he is the head of a great body of which we are the members. If elsewhere he had already said that we are all members of one body (Rom 12:4-5) and (1 Cor 12:12), here he makes it clear: "Christ is the head of the body, which is the Church" (as also in Eph 1:22; 4:15; 5:23), and it is up to us to ensure that this Body grows harmoniously. 

*From the Gospel according to Luke (10:25-37)

A doctor of the Law asks Jesus two challenging questions: "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" and, even more challenging, "Who is my neighbour?" The answer he receives is demanding. Starting from his questions, Jesus leads him to the very heart of God and places this journey in a concrete context familiar to his listeners: the thirty-kilometre road between Jerusalem and Jericho, a road in the middle of the desert, which at the time was indeed a place of ambushes, so that the story of the assault and the care of the wounded man sounded extremely plausible. A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who robbed him and left him half dead. Added to his physical and moral misfortune is religious exclusion because, having been touched by 'unclean' people, he himself becomes unclean. This is the reason for the apparent indifference, indeed repulsion, of the priest and the Levite, who are concerned with preserving their ritual integrity. A Samaritan, on the other hand, has no such scruples. This scene on the side of the road expresses in images what Jesus himself did so many times when he healed even on the Sabbath, when he bent down to lepers, when he welcomed sinners, quoting the prophet Hosea several times: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice, knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings' (Hos 6:6). Jesus responds to the first question of the doctor of the Law as the rabbis would, with a question: "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?" And the interlocutor recites enthusiastically: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself." "You have answered correctly," Jesus replies, because the only thing that matters for Israel is fidelity to this twofold love. The secret of this knowledge, which the entire Bible reveals to us, is that God is "merciful" (literally in Hebrew: "his bowels tremble"). It is no coincidence that Luke uses the same expression to describe Jesus' emotion at the sight of the widow of Nain carrying her only son to the cemetery (Luke 7) or to recount the Father's emotion at the return of the prodigal son (Luke 15). Even the good Samaritan, when he saw the wounded man, "had compassion on him" (he was moved in his bowels). Even though he is merciful to the Jews, he remains only a Samaritan, that is, one of the least respectable, since Jews and Samaritans were enemies: the Jews despised the Samaritans because they were heretics (an ancient contempt: in the book of Sirach, among the detestable peoples, "the foolish people who dwell in Shechem" are mentioned (Sir 50:26)), while the Samaritans did not forgive the Jews for destroying their sanctuary on Mount Gerizim (in 129 BC). Yet this despised man is declared by Jesus to be closer to God than the dignitaries and servants of the Temple, who passed by without stopping. The "compassion in the bowels" of the Samaritan — an unbeliever in the eyes of the Jews — becomes "the image of God," and Jesus proposes a reversal of perspective. When asked, "Who is my neighbour?", he does not respond with a "definition" of neighbour (the Latin word "finis," meaning "limit," is also found in the word "definition"), but makes it a matter of the heart. Pay attention to the vocabulary: the word 'neighbour' implies that there are also those who are far away. And so, to the question, 'Who then is my neighbour?', the Lord replies, 'It is up to you to decide how far you want to go to be a neighbour'. And he offers the Samaritan as an example simply because he is capable of compassion. Jesus concludes, 'Go and do likewise'. This is not mere advice. He had already said to the doctor of the Law: "Do this and you will live," and now Luke highlights the need for consistency between words and deeds: it is fine to talk like a book (as in the case of the doctor of the Law), but it is not enough, because Jesus said: "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and put it into practice" (Lk 8:21). Ultimately, Jesus challenges us to a love without boundaries!

NOTE The question "What is the greatest commandment?" also appears in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, while the parable of the Good Samaritan is unique to Luke. It is also interesting to note that this positive presentation of a Samaritan (Lk 10) immediately follows the refusal of a Samaritan village to welcome Jesus and his disciples on their way to Jerusalem (Lk 9). Jesus rejects all generalisations, and this parable ultimately highlights a question of priorities in our lives.

+Giovanni D'Ercole

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (year C)  [6 July 2025]

May God bless us and the Virgin Mary protect us! Even though we are entering the holiday season, I will continue to provide you with comments on the Sunday Bible readings.

*First Reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (66:10-14)

When a prophet speaks so much of consolation, it means that things are going very badly, so he feels the need to console and keep hope alive: this text was therefore written at a difficult time. The author, Third Isaiah, is one of the distant disciples of the great Isaiah and is preaching to the exiles who returned from Babylonian exile around 535 BC. Their long-awaited return proved disappointing in every respect because after 50 years everything had changed. Jerusalem bore the scars of the catastrophe of 587 when it was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar; the Temple was in ruins, as was much of the city, and the exiles had not received the triumphant welcome they had hoped for.  The prophet speaks of mourning and consolation, but in the face of the prevailing discouragement, he is not content with words of comfort, but even dares to make an almost triumphal speech: "Rejoice with Jerusalem, all you who love her. Rejoice with her, all you who mourn for her" (v. 10). Where does this optimism come from? The answer is simple: from faith, or rather from the experience of Israel, which continues to hope in every age because it is certain that God is always present and, even when all seems lost, knows that nothing is impossible for God. Even in times of great discouragement during the Exodus, it was proclaimed: "Has the Lord's arm been shortened?  (Num 11:23), an image that recurs several times in the book of Isaiah. During the exile, when hope was wavering, Second Isaiah communicated on behalf of God: "Is my hand too short to deliver?" (Isaiah 50:2) And after the return, in a period of great concern, the Third Isaiah, whom we read today, takes up the same image twice, both in chapter 59:1 and in the last verse of today's reading: "The hand of the Lord will be made known to his servants" (v. 14). God, who has delivered his people so many times in the past, will never abandon them. Even on its own, the term 'hand' is an allusion to the exodus from Egypt, when God intervened with a mighty hand and outstretched arm. Verse 11 of today's text: "You will be nursed and satisfied at the breast of his consolations" recalls the terrible trial of faith that the people experienced in the desert when they were hungry and thirsty, and even then God assured them of what was necessary.  This reference to the book of Exodus offers two lessons: on the one hand, God wants us to be free and supports all our efforts to establish justice and freedom; but on the other hand, our cooperation is important and necessary. The people left Egypt thanks to God's intervention, and Israel never forgets this, but it had to walk towards the promised land, sometimes with great difficulty. Then, in verse 13, when Isaiah promises on God's behalf, "I will make peace flow like a river," this does not mean that peace will be established magically. The Lord is always faithful to his promises: we must continue to believe that he remains and works at our side in every situation. At the same time, it is essential that we act because peace, justice and happiness need our convinced and generous contribution. 

*Responsorial Psalm (65/66, 1-3a, 4-5, 6-7a, 16.20)

 As is often the case, the last verse sums up the meaning of the entire psalm: 'Blessed be God who has not rejected my prayer, who has not denied me his mercy' (v. 20). The vocabulary used shows that this psalm is a song of thanksgiving: "Shout, sing, give him glory... let all the earth bow down before you... I will tell of all his deeds," probably composed to accompany the sacrifices in the Temple of Jerusalem. It is not an individual who speaks, but the entire people giving thanks to God. Israel gives thanks as always for its deliverance from Egypt with very clear references: "He turned the sea into dry land... they passed through the river on foot"; or: "Come and see the works of God, terrible in his deeds towards men". Even the expression "the works of God" in the Bible always refers to the liberation from Egypt. Moreover, the similarity between this psalm and the song of Moses after the crossing of the Red Sea (Ex 15) is striking, an event that illuminates the entire history of Israel: God's work for his people has no other purpose than to free them from all forms of slavery. This is the meaning of chapter 66 of Isaiah, which we read this Sunday in the first reading: in a very dark period of Jerusalem's history, after the Babylonian exile, the message is clear: God will comfort you. We do not know if this psalm was composed at the same time, but in any case the context is the same because it was written to be sung in the Temple of Jerusalem, and the faithful who flock there on pilgrimage foreshadow the whole of humanity that will go up to Jerusalem at the end of time. And if the text of Isaiah announces the new Jerusalem where all nations will flock, the psalm responds: 'Acclaim God, all you of the earth... let all the earth bow down before you... let them sing hymns to your name'. The promised joy is the central theme of these two texts: when times are hard, we must remember that God wants nothing but our happiness and that one day his joy will fill the whole earth, as Isaiah writes, to which the psalm echoes: "Come, listen, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what he has done for me" (vv. 16, 20). The texts of the prophet Isaiah and the psalmist are immersed in the same atmosphere, but they are not on the same level: the prophet expresses God's revelation, while the psalm is man's prayer. When God speaks, he is concerned with the glory and happiness of Jerusalem. When the people, through the voice of the psalmist, speak, they give God the glory that belongs to him alone: "Shout for joy, all you people of the earth; sing to God, sing praises to his name; give him glory with praise" (vv. 1-3). Finally, the psalm becomes the voice of all Israel: "Blessed be God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his mercy from me" (v. 20). A wonderful way of saying that love will have the last word.

*Second Reading from the Letter of Saint Paul to the Galatians (6:14-18)

"As for me, there is no other boast than the cross." Paul's insistence on the cross as his only boast suggests that there is a problem. In fact, the letter to the Galatians begins with a strong rebuke because the believers had very quickly turned from Christ to another gospel, and some were sowing confusion by wanting to overturn the gospel of Christ. Those sowing discord were Jews who had converted to Christianity (Jewish Christians) who wanted to force everyone to practise all the prescriptions of the Jewish religion, including circumcision. Paul then warns them because he fears that behind the discussion about whether or not to be circumcised there lies a real heresy, since only faith in Christ, made concrete by Baptism, saves us, and imposing circumcision would be tantamount to denying this, considering the cross of Christ insufficient. For this reason, he reminds the Galatians that their only boast is the cross of Christ. But to understand Paul, it must be clarified that for him the cross is an event and he does not focus only on the sufferings of Jesus: for him it is the central event in the history of the world. The cross—that is, Christ crucified and risen—has reconciled God and humanity, and has reconciled people among themselves. When he writes that through the cross of Christ, 'the world has been crucified to me', he means that since the event of the cross, the world has been definitively transformed and nothing will ever be the same again, as he also writes in his letter to the Colossians (Col 1:19-20). The proof that the cross is the decisive event in history is that death has been conquered: Christ is risen. For Paul, the cross and the resurrection are inseparable, since they are one and the same event. From the cross, a new creation was born, in contrast to the old world. Throughout this letter, Paul contrasts the regime of the Mosaic Law with the regime of faith; life according to the flesh and life according to the Spirit; the old slavery and the freedom we receive from Jesus Christ. By adhering to Christ through faith, we become free to live according to the Spirit. The old world is at war and humanity does not believe that God is merciful love and, as a result, by disobeying his commandments, creates rivalry and wars for power and money. The new creation, on the contrary, is the obedience of the Son, his total trust, his forgiveness of his executioners, his cheek turned to those who tear his beard, as Isaiah writes. The Passion of Christ was a culmination of hatred and injustice perpetrated in the name of God; but Christ made it a culmination of non-violence, gentleness and forgiveness. And we, in turn, grafted onto the Son, are made capable of the same obedience and the same love. This extraordinary conversion, which is the work of the Spirit of God, inspires Paul to write a particularly incisive formula: Through the cross, the world is crucified for me and I for the world, which means: The way of life according to the world is abolished; we now live according to the Spirit, and this becomes a source of pride for Christians. Proclaiming the cross of Christ is not easy, and when he says, 'I bear the marks of Jesus on my body', he is alluding to the persecutions he himself suffered for proclaiming the Gospel. A final note: this is the only Pauline writing that ends with the word 'brothers'. After arguing with the Galatians, Paul finally finds in his community the brotherhood that binds evangelisers to the evangelised, and the only source of this rediscovered love is 'in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ' (v. 18). 

*From the Gospel according to Luke (10:1-20)

 This page of the Gospel presents Jesus on his way to Jerusalem. After overcoming all temptations and defeating the prince of this world, he must pass on the baton to his disciples, who in turn must pass it on to their successors. The mission is too important and precious and must be shared. First, there is the invitation to pray to "the Lord of the harvest to send workers into his harvest" (v. 2). God knows everything, but he invites us to pray so that we may allow ourselves to be enlightened by him. Prayer is never intended to inform God: that would be presumptuous on our part, but it prepares us to allow ourselves to be transformed by him. He thus sends the large group of disciples on mission, providing them with all the necessary advice to face trials and obstacles that are well known to him. When they are rejected, as Jesus experienced in Samaria, they must not be discouraged but, setting out, they will proclaim to all: "The Kingdom of God is near you" (v. 9).  And they will add: "Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet, we shake off against you" (v. 11). Here are some specific instructions for the disciples. "I am sending you out as lambs among wolves" (v. 3), which indicates that we must always remain meek as lambs, since the mission of the disciple is to bring peace: "Whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace be to this house. If there is a son of peace there, your peace will rest on him'" (vv. 5-6). In other words, we must believe at all costs in the contagious power of peace, because when we sincerely wish for peace, peace truly grows. And if someone does not accept you, do not let yourselves be weighed down by failure and rejection. Every disciple will have a difficult life because, if Jesus himself had nowhere to lay his head, this will also be the case for his disciples. For this reason, they must learn to live day by day without worrying about tomorrow, content with eating and drinking what is served, just as in the desert the people of God could gather manna only for that day. To evangelise, they will take with them only the essentials: "no purse, no bag, no sandals" (v. 4) and "do not go from house to house" (v. 7). There will often be painful choices to make because of the urgency of the mission, and it will be important to resist the temptation of the vanity of success: "Do not rejoice that the demons submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven" (v. 20). The desire for fame has always been a trap for disciples, but true apostles are not necessarily the most famous. We might think that the seventy-two disciples passed the test well because, on their return, Jesus was able to say, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from the sky" (v. 18).  As he began his final march to Jerusalem, Jesus felt great comfort because of this, so much so that Luke immediately tells us: "At that moment, he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, 'I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.

+Giovanni D'Ercole