Today, Luke's Gospel presents to us the parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus (Lk 16: 19-31). The rich man personifies the wicked use of riches by those who spend them on uncontrolled and selfish luxuries, thinking solely of satisfying themselves without caring at all for the beggar at their door.

The poor man, on the contrary, represents the person whom God alone cares for: unlike the rich man he has a name: "Lazarus", an abbreviation of "Eleazarus", which means, precisely, "God helps him".

God does not forget those who are forgotten by all; those who are worthless in human eyes are precious in the Lord's. The story shows how earthly wickedeness is overturned by divine justice: after his death, Lazarus was received "in the bosom of Abraham", that is, into eternal bliss; whereas the rich man ended up "in Hades, in torment". This is a new and definitive state of affairs against which no appeal can be made, which is why one must mend one's ways during one's life; to do so after serves no purpose.

This parable can also be interpreted in a social perspective. Pope Paul VI's interpretation of it 40 years ago in his Encyclical Populorum Progressio remains unforgettable. Speaking of the campaign against hunger he wrote: "It is a question... of building a world where every man... can live a fully human life... where the poor man Lazarus can sit down at the same table with the rich man" (n. 47).

The cause of the numerous situations of destitution, the Encyclical recalls, is on the one hand "servitude imposed.... by other men", and on the other, "natural forces over which [the person] has not sufficient control" (ibid.).

Unfortunately, some populations suffer from both these factors. How can we fail to think at this time especially of the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, affected by serious floods in the past few days? Nor can we forget the many other humanitarian emergencies in various regions of the planet, in which conflicts for political and economic power contribute to exacerbating existing, oppressive environmental situations.

The appeal voiced by Paul VI at that time, "Today the peoples in hunger are making a dramatic appeal to the peoples blessed with abundance" (ibid., n. 3), is still equally pressing today.

We cannot say that we do not know which way to take: we have the Law and the Prophets, Jesus tells us in the Gospel. Those who do not wish to listen to them would not change even if one of the dead were to return to admonish them.

May the Virgin Mary help us to make the most of the present time to listen to and put into practice these words of God. May she obtain for us that we become more attentive to our brethren in need, to share with them the much or the little that we have and to contribute, starting with ourselves, to spreading the logic and style of authentic solidarity.

[Pope Benedict, Angelus 30 September 2007]

Whole-heartedly. I emphasise, here, the adjective 'whole'. Totalitarianism in politics is bad. In religion, on the other hand, our totalitarianism in the face of God is perfectly fine. It is written: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These precepts which I give thee today, let them be fixed in thy heart; thou shalt repeat them to thy children, thou shalt speak of them when thou sittest in thy house, when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. You shall bind them to your hand as a sign, they shall be like a pendant between your eyes, and you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your doors". That "all" repeated and bent into practice with such insistence is truly the banner of Christian maximalism. And it is right: God is too great, too much He deserves from us, for us to throw to Him, as to a poor Lazarus, just a few crumbs of our time and heart. He is infinite good and will be our eternal happiness: the money, the pleasures, the fortunes of this world, in comparison with Him, are barely fragments of good and fleeting moments of happiness. It would be unwise to give so much of us to these things and so little of us to Jesus. Above all things. Now we come to a direct comparison between God and man, between God and the world. It would not be right to say: "Either God or man". One must love "and God and man"; the latter, however, never more than God or against God or equal to God. In other words: God's love is indeed prevalent, but not exclusive. The Bible declares Jacob holy and beloved of God, shows him working seven years to win Rachel as his wife; "and they seemed to him but a few days, those years, so great was his love for her". Francis de Sales comments on these words: "Jacob," he writes, "loves Rachel with all his strength, and with all his strength he loves God; but he does not love Rachel as God nor God as Rachel. He loves God as his God above all things and more than himself; he loves Rachel as his wife above all other women and as himself. He loves God with absolutely and sovereignly supreme love, and Rachel with supreme marital love; the one love is not contrary to the other, because Rachel's love does not violate the supreme advantages of the love of God". And for your sake I love my neighbour. Here we are faced with two loves that are "twin brothers" and inseparable. Some people it is easy to love; others, it is difficult; we do not like them, they have offended us and done us harm; only if I love God seriously, do I come to love them, as daughters of God and because he asks me to. Jesus also laid down how to love one's neighbour: not only with feeling, but with deeds. This is the way, he said. I will ask you: I was hungry in the person of my least brothers, did you give me food? Did you visit me when I was sick?

The Catechism translates these and other words from the Bible into the double list of the seven corporal and seven spiritual works of mercy. The list is not complete and should be updated. Among the hungry, for example, today, it is no longer just about this or that individual; there are whole peoples.

We all remember the great words of Pope Paul VI: 'The peoples of hunger today dramatically challenge the peoples of affluence. The Church trembles before this cry of anguish and calls each one to respond with love to his brother'. At this point charity is joined by justice, because - Paul VI goes on to say - "private property does not constitute for anyone an unconditional and absolute right. No one is authorised to reserve for his own exclusive use what exceeds his need, when others lack the necessary". Consequently, 'every exhausting arms race becomes an intolerable scandal'.

In the light of these strong expressions, we see how far we - individuals and peoples - are still from loving others 'as ourselves', which is Jesus' command.

Another command: forgive offences received. It seems as if the Lord gives this forgiveness precedence over worship: "If therefore you present your offering on the altar and there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go first to be reconciled with your brother and then return to offer your gift".

The last words of the prayer are: Lord, may I love you more and more. Here too there is obedience to a command from God, who has put the thirst for progress in our hearts. From stilts, caves and the first huts, we have moved on to houses, palaces, skyscrapers; from travelling on foot, on the back of a mule or camel, to carriages, trains, planes. And we still want to progress by ever faster means, reaching ever more distant destinations. But loving God - we have seen it - is also a journey: God wants it more and more intense and perfect. He said to all his own: 'You are the light of the world, the salt of the earth'; 'be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect'. This means: love God not a little, but a lot; do not stop at the point where you have arrived, but with His help, progress in love.

[Pope John Paul II, General Audience 27 September 1978]

I should like to pause with you today on the parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus. The lives of these two people seem to run on parallel tracks: their life status is opposite and not at all connected. The gate of the rich man’s house is always closed to the poor man, who lies outside it, seeking to eat the leftovers from the rich man’s table. The rich man is dressed in fine clothes, while Lazarus is covered with sores; the rich man feasts sumptuously every day, while Lazarus starves. Only the dogs take care of him, and they come to lick his wounds. This scene recalls the harsh reprimand of the Son of Man at the Last Judgement: “I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was [...] naked and you did not clothe me” (Mt 25:42-43). Lazarus is a good example of the silent cry of the poor throughout the ages and the contradictions of a world in which immense wealth and resources are in the hands of the few.

Jesus says that one day that rich man died: the poor and the rich die, they have the same destiny, like all of us, there are no exceptions to this. Thus, that man turned to Abraham, imploring him in the name of ‘father’ (vv. 24, 27). Thereby claiming to be his son, belonging to the People of God. Yet in life he showed no consideration toward God. Instead he made himself the centre of all things, closed inside his world of luxury and wastefulness. In excluding Lazarus, he did not take into consideration the Lord nor his law. To ignore a poor man is to scorn God! We must learn this well: to ignore the poor is to scorn God. There is a detail in the parable that is worth noting: the rich man has no name, but only an adjective: ‘the rich man’; while the name of the poor man is repeated five times, and ‘Lazarus’ means ‘God helps’. Lazarus, who is lying at the gate, is a living reminder to the rich man to remember God, but the rich man does not receive that reminder. Hence, he will be condemned not because of his wealth, but for being incapable of feeling compassion for Lazarus and for not coming to his aid.

In the second part of the parable, we again meet Lazarus and the rich man after their death (vv. 22-31). In the hereafter the situation is reversed: the poor Lazarus is carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom in heaven, while the rich man is thrown into torment. Thus the rich man “lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom”. He seems to see Lazarus for the first time, but his words betray him: “Father Abraham”, he calls, “have mercy upon me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame”. Now the rich man recognizes Lazarus and asks for his help, while in life he pretended not to see him. How often do many people pretend not to see the poor! To them the poor do not exist. Before he denied him even the leftovers from his table, and now he would like him to bring him a drink! He still believes he can assert rights through his previous social status. Declaring it impossible to grant his request, Abraham personally offers the key to the whole story: he explains that good things and evil things have been distributed so as to compensate for earthly injustices, and the door that in life separated the rich from the poor is transformed into “a great chasm”. As long as Lazarus was outside his house, the rich man had the opportunity for salvation, to thrust open the door, to help Lazarus, but now that they are both dead, the situation has become irreparable. God is never called upon directly, but the parable clearly warns: God’s mercy toward us is linked to our mercy toward our neighbour; when this is lacking, also that of not finding room in our closed heart, He cannot enter. If I do not thrust open the door of my heart to the poor, that door remains closed. Even to God. This is terrible.

At this point, the rich man thinks about his brothers, who risk suffering the same fate, and he asks that Lazarus return to the world in order to warn them. But Abraham replies: “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them”. In order to convert, we must not wait for prodigious events, but open our heart to the Word of God, which calls us to love God and neighbour. The Word of God may revive a withered heart and cure it of its blindness. The rich man knew the Word of God, but did not let it enter his heart, he did not listen to it, and thus was incapable of opening his eyes and of having compassion for the poor man. No messenger and no message can take the place of the poor whom we meet on the journey, because in them Jesus himself comes to meet us: “as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40), Jesus says. Thus hidden in the reversal of fate that the parable describes lies the mystery of our salvation, in which Christ links poverty with mercy.

Dear brothers and sisters, listening to this Gospel passage, all of us, together with the poor of the earth, can sing with Mary: “He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away” (Lk 1:52-53).

[Pope Francis, General Audience 18 May 2016]

Second Lent Sunday (year A)  [1st March 2026]

*First Reading from the Book of Genesis (12:1-4)

The few lines we have just read constitute the first act of the entire adventure of our faith: the faith of the Jews, then, in chronological order, of Christians and Muslims. We are in the second millennium BC. Abram* lived in Chaldea, that is, in Iraq, and more precisely in the extreme south-east of Iraq, in the city of UR, in the Euphrates valley, near the Persian Gulf. He lived with his wife Sarai, his father Terah, his brothers (Nahor and Aran) and his nephew Lot. Abram was seventy-five years old, his wife Sarai sixty-five; they had no children and, given their age, would never have any. One day, his old father, Terah, set out on the road with Abram, Sarai and his nephew Lot. The caravan travelled up the Euphrates valley from the south-east to the north-west with the intention of then descending towards the land of Canaan. There was a shorter route, of course, connecting the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, but it crossed a huge desert. Terah and Abram preferred to travel along the 'Fertile Crescent', which lives up to its name. The last stop in the north-west is called Harran. It is there that old Terah dies. And it is above all there that, for the first time, about 4000 years ago, around 1850 BC, God spoke to Abram. 

"Leave your land," says our liturgical translation, but it omits the first two words, probably to avoid excessive interpretations, which have not always been avoided. In fact, in Hebrew, the first two words are "You, go!" Grammatically, they mean nothing else. It is a personal appeal, a setting aside: it is a true story of vocation. And it is to this simple invitation that Abram responded. It is often translated as "Go for yourself," but this is already an over-interpretation of faith. "Go for yourself": we must be aware that we are moving away from the literal meaning of the text and entering into an interpretation, a spiritual commentary. It is Rashi, the great 11th-century Jewish commentator (in Troyes in Champagne), who translates "Go for yourself, for your own good and for your happiness". In fact, this is what Abram will experience in the course of the days. If God calls man, it is for man's own good, not for anything else! God's merciful plan for humanity is contained in these two little words: 'for you'. God already reveals himself as the one who desires the good of man, of all men**; if there is one thing to remember, it is this! 'Go for yourself': a believer is someone who knows that, whatever happens, God is leading him towards his fulfilment, towards his happiness. So here are God's first words to Abram, the words that set off his whole adventure... and ours! Go, leave your country, your family and your father's house, and go to the land that I will show you. And what follows are only promises: I will make you a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing... All the families of the earth shall be blessed in you. Abram is torn from his natural destiny, chosen, elected by God, invested with a universal vocation. Abram, for the moment, is a nomad, perhaps rich, but unknown, and he has no children; his wife Sarai is well past childbearing age. Yet it is he whom God chooses to become the father of a great people. This is what that 'for you' meant earlier: God promises him everything that, at that time, constitutes a man's happiness: numerous descendants and God's blessing. But this happiness promised to Abram is not only for him: in the Bible, no vocation, no calling is ever for the selfish interest of the one who is called. This is one of the criteria of an authentic vocation: every vocation is always for a mission in the service of others. Here is this phrase: 'In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed'. It means at least two things: first, your success will be such that you will be taken as an example: when people want to wish someone happiness, they will say, 'May you be as happy as Abram'. Second, this 'in you' can mean through you; and then it means 'through you, I, God, will bless all the families of the earth'. God's plan for happiness passes through Abram, but it surpasses him, it overflows him; it concerns all humanity: 'In you, through you, all the families of the earth will be blessed'. Throughout the history of Israel, the Bible will remain faithful to this first discovery: Abraham and his descendants are the chosen people, chosen by God but for the benefit of all humanity, from the first day, from the first word to Abraham. The fact remains that other nations are free not to enter into this blessing; this is the meaning of the seemingly curious phrase: "I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you I will curse" (12:3). It is a way of expressing our freedom: anyone who wishes to do so can share in the blessing promised to Abram, but no one is obliged to accept it! The time for the great departure has come; the text is extraordinary in its sobriety: it simply says, "Abram departed as the Lord had commanded him" (12:4), and Lot went with him. One cannot be more laconic! This departure, at the simple call of God, is the most beautiful proof of faith; four thousand years later, we can say that our faith finds its source in that of Abraham; and if our whole lives are illuminated by faith, it is thanks to him! And all human history becomes the place of the fulfilment of God's promises to Abraham: a slow, progressive fulfilment, but certain and sure.

Notes: *At the beginning of this great adventure, the man we call Abraham was still called only Abram; later, after years of pilgrimage, he would receive from God the new name by which we know him: Abraham, which means 'father of multitudes'. 

**This 'for you' should not be understood as exclusive, even if it was not immediately understood at first. Only after a long discovery of God's Covenant were believers able to access the full truth: God's plan concerns not only Abraham and his descendants, but all of humanity. This is what we call the universality of God's plan. This discovery dates back to the Exile in Babylon in the 6th century BC.

Addition: At another point in Abraham's life, when he offers Isaac as a sacrifice, God uses the same expression, "Go," to give him the strength to face the trial, reminding him of the journey he has already made. The Letter to the Hebrews takes Abraham's departure to explain what faith is (cf. Heb 11:8-12). 

*Responsorial Psalm (32/33)

The word 'love' appears three times in these few verses, and this insistence responds very well to the first reading: Abraham is the first in all human history to discover that God is love and that he has plans for the happiness of humanity. However, it was necessary to believe in this extraordinary revelation. And Abraham believed, he agreed to trust in the words of the future that God announced to him. An old man without children, yet he would have had every reason to doubt this incredible promise from God. God says to him: Leave your country... I will make you a great nation. And the text of Genesis concludes that Abram left as the Lord had told him.

This is a beautiful example for us at the beginning of Lent: we should believe in all circumstances that God has plans for our happiness. This was precisely the meaning of the phrase pronounced over us on Ash Wednesday: "Repent and believe in the Gospel." To convert means to believe once and for all that the Newness is that God is Love. Jeremiah said on behalf of God: 'I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope' (Jer 29:11). Thus, the first two Sundays of Lent invite us to make a choice: on the first Sunday, we read in the book of Genesis the story of Adam: the man who suspects God in the face of a prohibition (not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil), imagining that God might even be jealous! These are the insinuations of the serpent, which means poison. For this second Sunday of Lent, however, we read the story of Abraham, the believer. A little further on, the book of Genesis says of him: Abram believed in the Lord, who counted him as righteous. And, to help us follow the same path as Abraham, this psalm suggests words of trust: 'The eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his love to deliver them from death'. At the beginning, we read: 'The earth is full of love...' and then the expression 'those who fear him' is explained in the next line: 'those who hope in his love', so far from fear, quite the opposite! The temptation is to want to be free and do whatever we want... to obey only ourselves. All this comes from experience, and that is why the chosen people can say: 'the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his love' because God has watched over them like a father over his children. When it says that he frees them from death, it is not talking about biological death. We must remember that at the time this psalm was composed, individual death was not considered a tragedy; what mattered was the survival of the people in the certainty that God would keep his people alive. At all times, and especially in times of trial, God accompanies his people and delivers them from death. The reference to times of famine is certainly an allusion to the manna that God sent during the Exodus, when hunger became threatening. All the people can bear witness to this care of God in every age; and when we sing "The word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness," we are simply repeating the name of the merciful and faithful God who revealed himself to Moses (Ex 34:6). The conclusion is a prayer of trust: "May your love be upon us, Lord, as we hope in you" is an invitation to believers to offer themselves to this love.

*Second reading from the second letter of St Paul the Apostle to Timothy (1:8b-10) 

Paul is in prison in Rome, he knows that he will soon be executed, and here he gives his last recommendations to Timothy: "My dear son, with the strength of God, suffer with me for the Gospel." This suffering is the persecution that is inevitable for a true disciple of Christ, as Jesus had said (cf. Mk 8:34-35). Both at the beginning and at the end of the passage, there is a reference to the Gospel, which is presented as an inclusion. In the middle, framed by these two identical references, Paul explains what this Gospel is. He uses the word Gospel in its etymological sense of good news, just as Jesus himself said at the beginning of his preaching in Galilee: "Repent and believe in the Gospel, the Good News" means that Christian preaching is the proclamation that the kingdom of God has finally been inaugurated. For Paul, it is in the central sentence of our text that we discover what the Gospel consists of: ultimately, it can be summed up in a few words: God has saved us through Jesus Christ.  *"God saved us": it is a past tense, something that has been accomplished; but at the same time, in order for people to enter into this salvation, it is necessary that the Gospel be proclaimed to them. It is therefore truly a holy vocation that has been entrusted to us: "God saved us and called us to a holy vocation" (1:9). It is a holy vocation because it is entrusted to us by God who is holy; it is a holy vocation because it involves proclaiming God's plan; it is a holy vocation because God's plan needs our collaboration: each of us must play our part, as Paul says. But the expression "holy vocation" also means something else: God's plan for us, for humanity, is so great that it fully deserves this name. The particular vocation of the apostles is part of this universal vocation of humanity.

*"God has saved us": in the Bible, the verb "to save" always means "to liberate". It took a long and gradual discovery of this reality on the part of the people of the Covenant: God wants man to be free and intervenes incessantly to free us from every form of slavery. There are many types of slavery: political slavery, such as servitude in Egypt or exile in Babylon; and each time Israel recognised God's work in its liberation; social slavery, and the Law of Moses, as the prophets never cease to call for the conversion of hearts so that every person may live in dignity and freedom; religious slavery, which is even more insidious. The prophets never ceased to transmit this will of God to see humanity finally freed from all its chains. Paul says that Jesus has freed us even from death: Jesus "has conquered death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (1:10). Paul affirms this 

as he prepares to be executed. Jesus himself died, and we too will all die. Jesus, therefore, is not speaking of biological death. What victory is he referring to then? Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, gives us his own life, which we can share spiritually, and which nothing can destroy, not even biological death. His Resurrection is proof that biological death cannot destroy it, so for us biological death will be nothing more than a passage towards the light that never sets: in the funeral liturgy we say: "Life is not taken away, but transformed". If biological death is part of our physical constitution, made of dust – as the book of Genesis says – it cannot separate us from Jesus Christ (cf. Rom 8:39). In us there is a relationship with God that nothing, not even biological death, can destroy: this is what St John calls 'eternal life'.

*From the Gospel according to Matthew (17:1-9)

"Jesus took Peter, James and John with him": once again we are faced with the mystery of God's choices. It was to Peter that Jesus had said shortly before, in Caesarea: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the powers of death will not prevail against it" (Mt 16:18). But Peter is accompanied by two brothers, James and John, the two sons of Zebedee. "And Jesus led them up a high mountain, apart": on a high mountain Moses had received the Revelation of the God of the Covenant and the tablets of the Law; that Law which was to progressively educate the people of the Covenant to live in the love of God and of their brothers and sisters. On the same mountain, Elijah had received the revelation of the God of tenderness in the gentle breeze... Moses and Elijah, the two pillars of the Old Testament... On the high mountain of the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John, the pillars of the Church, receive the revelation of the God of tenderness incarnate in Jesus: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased". And this revelation is granted to them to strengthen their faith before the storm of the Passion. Peter will write about it later (cf. 2 Pt 1:16-18).

The expression "my beloved Son: listen to him" designates Jesus as the Messiah: to Jewish ears, this simple phrase is a triple allusion to the Old Testament, because it recalls three very different texts, but ones that are well present in everyone's memory; all the more so because the expectation was intense at the time of Jesus' coming and hypotheses were multiplying: we have proof of this in the numerous questions addressed to Jesus in the Gospels. "Son" was the title usually given to kings, and the Messiah was expected to have the characteristics of a king descended from David, who would finally reign on the throne of Jerusalem, which had been without a king for a long time. The beloved, in whom I am well pleased, evoked a completely different context: it refers to the "Songs of the Servant" in the book of Isaiah; it meant that Jesus is the Messiah, no longer in the manner of a king, but of a Servant, in the sense of Isaiah (Is 42:1). 'Listen to him' meant something else: that Jesus is the Messiah-Prophet in the sense that Moses, in the Book of Deuteronomy, had announced to the people: 'The Lord your God will raise up for you, from among your own brothers, a prophet like me; you shall listen to him' (Dt 18:15). ' "Let us make three tents": this phrase of Peter suggests that the episode of the Transfiguration may have taken place during the Feast of Tabernacles, or at least in a climate linked to it, a feast celebrated in memory of the crossing of the desert during the Exodus and the Covenant made with God, in the fervent experience that the prophets would later call the betrothal of the people to the God of tenderness and fidelity. During this feast, people lived in huts for eight days, waiting and imploring a new manifestation of God that would be fulfilled with the coming of the Messiah. On the Mount of Transfiguration, the three apostles suddenly find themselves faced with this revelation of the mystery of Jesus: it is not surprising that they are seized with the fear that grips every man before the manifestation of the holy God. nor is it surprising that Jesus raises them up and reassures them: the Old Testament had already revealed to the people of the Covenant that the most holy God is the God who is close to man and that fear is not appropriate. But the revelation of the mystery of the Messiah, in all its dimensions, is not yet within everyone's reach; Jesus orders them not to tell anyone for the time being, before the Son of Man has risen from the dead. By saying this last sentence, Jesus confirms the revelation that the three disciples have just received: he is truly the Messiah whom the prophet Daniel saw in the form of a man, coming on the clouds of heaven (cf. Dan 7:13-14). Daniel himself presents the Son of Man not as a solitary individual, but as a people, whom he calls "the people of the Most High". The fulfilment is even more beautiful than the promise: in Jesus, Man-God, it is the whole of humanity that will receive this eternal kingship and be eternally transfigured. But Jesus said clearly: Tell no one anything before the Resurrection. Only after Jesus' Resurrection will the apostles be able to bear witness to it.

+Giovanni D'Ercole

First Lent Sunday [22 February 2026]

May God bless us and may the Virgin protect us. I apologise if I dwell too long  today on the presentation of the texts, but it is central to Christian life to understand in depth the drama of Genesis (first reading), which St Paul takes up in the second reading, bringing it to full understanding. Similarly, the responsorial psalm can be understood starting from the drama recounted in Genesis chapter 3, and likewise the Gospel shows us how to react in order to live in the kingdom of God already on this earth. In my opinion, it is a vision of life that must be clearly focused in order to understand the drama of the practical and often unconscious rejection of God that is consummated in the world in the face of the crucial question: why is there evil in the world? Why does God not destroy it?  

 Have a good Lent.

*First Reading from the Book of Genesis (2:7-9; 3:1-7a)

In the first chapters of Genesis, two different figures of man appear: the first who lives happily in complete harmony with God and with woman. and creation (chap. 2), and then the man who claims his autonomy by taking for himself the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (chap. 3). Jesus sums up in himself 'all our weaknesses' (Heb 4:15), and, put to the test, he will be the sign of the new humanity: 'the last Adam became a life-giving spirit' (1 Cor 15:45).  Before tackling this text, we must remember that its author never claimed to be a historian. The Bible was written neither by scientists nor by historians, but by believers for believers. The theologian who wrote these lines, probably at the time of Solomon in the 10th century BC, seeks to answer the questions that everyone asks: why evil? Why death? Why misunderstandings between couples? Why is life so difficult? Why is work so tiring? Why is nature sometimes hostile? To answer these questions, he draws on a certainty shared by his entire people: the goodness of God. God freed us from Egypt; God wants us to be free and happy. Since the famous exodus from Egypt, led by Moses, and the crossing of the desert, during which God's presence and support were experienced at every new difficulty, there can be no doubt about this. The story we have just read is therefore based on this certainty of God's benevolence and seeks to answer all our questions about evil in the world. With a good and benevolent God, how is it possible that evil exists? Our author has invented a parable to enlighten us: a garden of delights (this is the meaning of the word 'Eden') and humanity represented by a couple charged with cultivating and caring for the garden. The garden is full of trees, each more attractive than the next. The one in the middle is called the 'tree of life'; its fruit can be eaten like all the others. But somewhere in the garden – the text does not specify where – there is another tree, whose fruit is forbidden. It is called the 'tree of the knowledge of what makes one happy or unhappy'. Faced with this prohibition, the couple can have two attitudes: either to trust, knowing that God is only benevolence, and rejoice in having access to the tree of life; if God forbids us the other tree, it is because it is not good for us. Or they can suspect God of having evil intentions, imagining that he wants to prevent us from accessing knowledge. This is the serpent's argument: he addresses the woman and feigns understanding: 'So, did God really say, "You must not eat from any tree in the garden"?' (3:1). The woman replies: "We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God has said, 'You must not eat the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, nor touch it, or you will die'" (3:2-4) . Have you noticed the shift: simply because she has listened to the voice of suspicion, she now speaks only of that tree and says 'the tree in the middle of the garden'; now, in good faith, she no longer sees  the tree of life in the centre of the garden, but the tree 'of the knowledge of what makes one happy or unhappy'. Her gaze is already altered, simply because she has allowed the serpent to speak to her; then the serpent can continue its slow work of demolition: "No, you will not die at all! Indeed, God knows that on the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (3:5). Once again, the woman listens too well to these beautiful words, and the text suggests that her gaze is increasingly distorted: 'The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom' (3:6). The serpent has won: the woman takes the fruit, eats it, gives it to her husband, and he eats it too. And so the story ends: "Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked" (v. 7).  The serpent had spoken well: "your eyes will be opened" (3:5); the woman's mistake was to believe that he was speaking in her interest and revealing God's evil intentions. It was nothing but a lie: her gaze changed, it is true, but it became distorted. It is no coincidence that the suspicion cast on God is represented by the features of a serpent: Israel, in the desert, had experienced poisonous snakes. Our theologian at Solomon's court recalls this painful experience and says: there is a poison more serious than that of the most poisonous snakes; the suspicion cast on God is a deadly poison, it poisons our lives. The idea of our anonymous theologian is that all our misfortunes come from this suspicion that corrodes humanity. To say that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is reserved for God is to say that only God knows what makes us happy or unhappy; which, after all, is logical if he is the one who created us. Wanting to eat the fruit of this forbidden tree at all costs means claiming to determine for ourselves what is good for us: the warning 'You must not eat it and you must not touch it, otherwise you will die' clearly indicated that this was the wrong path to take. 

But wait! The story goes even further: during the journey through the desert, God gave the Law (the Torah) which from then on had to be observed, what we call the commandments. We know that the daily practice of this Law is the condition for the survival and harmonious growth of this people; if we truly knew that God only wants our life, our happiness, our freedom, we would trust and obey the Law with a good heart. It is truly the "tree of life" made available to us by God.

I said at the beginning that this is a parable, but it is a parable whose lesson applies to each of us; since the world began, it has always been the same story. St Paul (whom we read this Sunday in the second reading) continues his meditation and says: only Christ trusted the Father in everything; he shows us the way of Life.

Note: In the Hebrew text, the serpent's question is deliberately ambiguous: 'Did God really say, "You shall not eat of any tree in the garden"? 'הֲכִי־אָמַר אֱלֹהִים לֹא תֹאכְלוּ מִכֹּל עֵץ הַגָּן? " Ha-ki amar Elohim lo tochlu mikol etz ha-gan? Put this way, the question can be understood in a restrictive sense: "Did God really say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" interpreting "all trees" as a total negation. Or in a general and colloquial sense: "Did God really say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" interpreting "all" in an absolute sense, or as all trees except one, the tree of life or the other of the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent uses this ambiguity to sow doubt and suspicion, insinuating that God might be lying or withholding something good. In the oldest Hebrew manuscripts, there are no punctuation marks as we know them today, so the play on words and the double meaning were intentionally stronger. Exegetes note that the serpent does not make a clear statement but forms a subtle question that shifts the focus to doubt: "Perhaps God is deceiving you?" This account in Genesis has many resonances in the meditation of the people of Israel. One of the reflections suggested by the text concerns the tree of life: planted in the middle of the garden of Eden, it was accessible to man and its fruit was permitted. One might think that its fruit allowed man to remain alive, to that spiritual life that God had breathed into him: "The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being" (Gen 2:7). The rabbis then made the connection with the Law given by God on Sinai. In fact, it is accepted by believers as a gift from God, a support for daily life: 'My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart, for they will prolong your life and bring you peace' (Pr 3:1-2). . 

NB For further clarification, I would add this: There is the first prohibition: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 2:16-17, God sets only one limit on man: "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat." The tree of life is not forbidden at this point. The prohibition concerns only the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because God is the one who decides what is good and what is evil, and man is called to trust, not to replace God. Eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge means saying, 'I do not trust God; I decide what is good and what is evil'. After sin, there is a second prohibition (the tree of life) because the situation changes radically. In Genesis 3:22-24, we read: 'Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever'. Only after sin does God prevent access to the tree of life. Why? Because man, separated from God by sin, cannot live forever like this. Living eternally with the consequences of sin would be a condemnation, not a gift. God therefore protects man from a distorted immortality. In other words, God does not take life away as punishment, but to prevent evil from becoming eternal.

*Responsorial Psalm (50/51)

"Have mercy on me, O God, in your love; according to your great mercy, blot out my sin. Wash me completely from my guilt, purify me from my offence." The people of Israel are gathered for a great penitential celebration in the Temple of Jerusalem. They recognise themselves as sinners, but they also know God's inexhaustible mercy. After all, if they are gathered to ask for forgiveness, it is because they already know in advance that forgiveness has been granted. This, let us remember, was King David's great discovery: David took Bathsheba, with whom he had fallen in love, and had her husband Uriah killed, because a few days later, Bathsheba was expecting a child by him. When the prophet Nathan went to David, he did not first seek a word of repentance from him; instead, he began by reminding him of all God's gifts and announcing his forgiveness, even before David had had time to make the slightest confession (2 Sam 12). In essence, he said to him, 'Look at all that God has given you... well, know that he is ready to give you anything else you want!'. And a thousand times throughout its history, Israel has been able to verify that God is truly 'the merciful and compassionate Lord, slow to anger and rich in love and faithfulness', according to the revelation he granted to Moses in the desert (Ex 34:6). The prophets also transmitted this message, and the few verses of the psalm we have just heard are full of these discoveries of Isaiah and Ezekiel. Isaiah, for example: "It is I, I who blot out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins" (Is 43:25); or again: "I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you" (Is 44:22).

This proclamation of God's gratuitous forgiveness sometimes surprises us: it seems too good, perhaps; for some it even seems unfair: if everything is forgivable, what is the point of making an effort? Perhaps we are too quick to forget that we all, without exception, need God's mercy; so let us not complain about it! And let us not be surprised if God surprises us, for, as Isaiah says, "God's thoughts are not our thoughts". And Isaiah himself points out that it is above all in the matter of forgiveness that God surprises us most. The only condition required is to recognise ourselves as sinners. When the prodigal son (Lk 15) returns to his father, for reasons that are not very noble, Jesus puts a phrase from Psalm 50 on his lips: "Against you, against you alone, have I sinned," and this simple phrase restores the bond that the ungrateful young man had broken. Faced with this ever-renewed proclamation of God's mercy, the people of Israel — for it is they who speak here, as in all the psalms — recognise themselves as sinners: the confession is not detailed, as it never is in the penitential psalms, but the essential is said in this plea: "Have mercy on me, O God, in your love, according to your great mercy, blot out my sin... And God, who is all mercy, that is, as if drawn by misery, expects nothing more than this simple recognition of our poverty. The word "mercy" has the same root as the word "alms": literally, we are beggars before God. Two things remain to be done. First of all, simply give thanks for the forgiveness granted without ceasing; the praise that the people of Israel address to God is the recognition of the goodness with which he has filled them since the beginning of their history. This clearly shows that the most important prayer in a penitential celebration is thanksgiving for God's gifts and forgiveness: we must begin by contemplating Him, and only then, when this contemplation has revealed to us the gap between Him and us, can we recognise ourselves as sinners. The ritual of reconciliation says this clearly in its introduction: 'We confess God's love together with our sin'. And the song of gratitude will flow spontaneously from our lips: we need only allow God to open our hearts. "Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise"; some recognise here the first sentence of the Liturgy of the Hours each morning; in fact, it is taken from Psalm 50/51. This alone is a true lesson: praise and gratitude can only arise in us if God opens our hearts and our lips. St Paul puts it another way: 'God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba!", that is, "Father!"' (Gal 4:6). This irresistibly brings to mind a gesture of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark: the healing of a deaf-mute; touching his ears and tongue, Jesus said, 'Ephphatha', which means 'Be opened'. And then, spontaneously, those present applied to Jesus a phrase that the Bible reserved for God: "He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak" (cf. Is 35:5-6). Even today, in some baptismal celebrations, the celebrant repeats this gesture of Jesus on the baptised, saying: "The Lord Jesus has made the deaf hear and the mute speak; may he grant you to hear his word and proclaim your faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father". The second thing to do, and what God expects of us, is to forgive in turn, without delay or conditions... and this is a serious undertaking in our lives.

*Second Reading from the Letter of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Romans (5:12-19)

Adam was a figure of the one who was to come, Paul tells us; he speaks of Adam in the past tense because he refers to the book of Genesis and the story of the forbidden fruit, but for him Adam's drama is not a story of the past: this story is ours, every day; we are all Adam at times; the rabbis say, 'everyone is Adam to himself'.

And if we were to summarise the story of the Garden of Eden (which we reread in this Sunday's first reading), we could say this: by listening to the voice of the serpent rather than God's command, by allowing suspicion about God's intentions to invade their hearts, by believing that they could allow themselves everything, that they could 'know' everything - as the Bible says — man and woman placed themselves under the dominion of death. And when we say, 'everyone is Adam to himself', it means that every time we turn away from God, we allow the powers of death to invade our lives. St Paul, in his letter to the Romans, continues the same meditation and announces that humanity has taken a decisive step in Jesus Christ; we are all brothers and sisters of Adam and we are all brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ; we are brothers and sisters of Adam when we allow the poison of suspicion to infest our hearts, when we presume to make ourselves the law. We are brothers and sisters of Christ when we trust God enough to let him guide our lives. We are under the dominion of death when we behave like Adam; when we behave like Jesus, that is, like him, 'obedient' (i.e. trusting), we are already resurrected in the kingdom of life, the one John speaks of: 'He who believes in me, even if he dies, will live', a life that biological death does not interrupt. Let us return to the account in the Book of Genesis: The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground; he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. This breath of God that makes man a living being – as the text says – was not given to animals: yet they are very much alive in a biological sense; we can therefore deduce that man enjoys a life different from biological life. St Paul affirms that because of Adam, death has reigned: he uses the terms 'reign' and 'reign over' several times, showing that there are two kingdoms that confront each other: the kingdom of sin when humanity acts like Adam, which brings death, judgement and condemnation. Then there is the kingdom of Christ, that is, with him, the new humanity, which is the kingdom of grace, of life, of free gift, of justification. However, no man is entirely in the kingdom of Christ, and Paul himself recognises this: 'I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want' (Rom 7:19). . Adam, that is, humanity, was created to be king, to cultivate and keep the garden, as we read in the book of Genesis, but, ill-advised by the serpent, he wants to do everything by himself, with his own strength, cutting himself off from God. Jesus Christ, on the contrary, does not 'claim' this kingship: it is given to him. As Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians: "though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself" (2:6, NRSV). The story of the Garden of Eden says the same thing in images: before the Fall, man and woman could eat the fruit of the tree of life; after the Fall, they no longer have access to it. Each in its own way, these two texts – that of Genesis on the one hand and that of the letter to the Romans on the other – tell us the deepest truth of our lives: with God, everything is grace, everything is a free gift; and Paul here insists on the abundance, on the profusion of grace, even speaking of the 'disproportion' of grace: It is not like the fall, the free gift... much more, God's grace has been poured out in abundance on the multitude, this grace given in one man, Jesus Christ. Everything is a gift, and this is not surprising since, as St John says, God is Love. It is not because Christ behaved well that he received a reward, and Adam received punishment because of his misconduct. Paul's discourse is deeper: Christ lives in total trust that everything will be given to him in God... and everything is given to him in the Resurrection. Adam, that is, each one of us, often wants to take possession of what can only be received as a gift, and for this reason finds himself 'naked', that is, deprived of everything. We could say that by birth we are citizens of the kingdom of Adam; through baptism we have asked to be naturalised in the kingdom of Christ. Obedience and disobedience in Paul's sense could thus be replaced: 'obedience' with trust and 'disobedience' with mistrust; as Kierkegaard says: "The opposite of sin is not virtue; the opposite of sin is faith." If we reread the story of Genesis, we can see that the author intentionally did not give proper names to the man and woman; he spoke of Adam (derived from adamah, meaning earth, dust), which means 'human being taken from the earth', while Eve (derived from Chavah, meaning life) is the one who gives life. By not giving them names, he wanted us to understand that the drama of Adam and Eve is not the story of particular individuals, but the story of every human being, and has always been so.

*From the Gospel according to Matthew (4:1-11)

Every year, Lent begins with the story of Jesus' temptations in the desert: we must believe that this is a truly fundamental text! This year we read it according to St Matthew. After recounting the baptism of Jesus, Matthew immediately continues: "Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil" . The evangelist thus invites us to make a connection between Jesus' baptism and the temptations that immediately follow. Matthew had said a few verses earlier: Jesus "will save his people from their sins", which is precisely the meaning of the name Jesus. John the Baptist baptises Jesus in the Jordan even though he did not agree and had said: " I need to be baptised by you, and yet you come to me!" (Mt 3:14)... And it came to pass that when Jesus came up out of the water after his baptism, the heavens opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him. And a voice came from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

This phrase alone publicly announces that Jesus is truly the Messiah: because the expression 'Son of God' was synonymous with King-Messiah, and the phrase 'the beloved, in whom I am well pleased' (3:17) refers to one of the songs of the Servant in Isaiah. In a few words, Matthew reminds us of the whole mystery of the person of Jesus; and it is he, precisely, who is the Messiah, the Saviour, the Servant who will confront the Tempter. Like his people a few centuries earlier, he is led into the desert; like his people, he knows hunger; like his people, he must discover what God's will is for his children; like his people, he must choose before whom to bow down. "If you are the Son of God," repeats the Tempter, thus revealing the real problem; and Jesus is confronted with it, not only three times, but throughout his earthly life. What does it mean, in concrete terms, to be the Messiah? The question takes various forms: solving people's problems with miracles, such as turning stones into bread? Provoking God to test his promises? ... By throwing himself from the temple, for example, because Psalm 91 promised that God would rescue his Messiah... Possessing the world, dominating, reigning at any cost, even worshipping any idol? Even ceasing to be the Son? It should be noted that in the third temptation, the Tempter no longer repeats "If you are the Son of God".

The culmination of these temptations is that they target God's promises: they promise nothing more than what God himself promised to his Messiah. And the two interlocutors, the Tempter and Jesus, know this well. But here's the thing... God's promises are in the order of love; they can only be received as gifts; love cannot be demanded, it cannot be seized, it is received on bended knee, with gratitude. Ultimately, the same thing happens as in the Garden of Genesis: Adam knows, and rightly so, that he was created to be king, to be free, to be master of creation; but instead of accepting gifts as gifts, with gratitude and appreciation, he demands, he claims, he places himself on a par with God... He leaves the order of love and can no longer receive the love offered... he finds himself poor and naked. Jesus makes the opposite choice: 'Get behind me, Satan!' as he once said to Peter, adding, 'Your thoughts are not those of God, but those of men' (Mt 16:23). Furthermore, several times in this text, Matthew calls the Tempter "devil," which in Greek means "the one who divides." Satan is for each of us, as he is for Jesus himself, the one who tends to separate us from God, to see things in Adam's way and not in God's way. On closer inspection, it all lies in the gaze: Adam's is distorted; to keep his gaze clear, Jesus scrutinises the Word of God: the three responses to the Tempter are quotations from the book of Deuteronomy (chapter 8), in a passage that is precisely a meditation on the temptations of the people of Israel in the desert. Then, Matthew points out, the devil (the divider) leaves him; he has not succeeded in dividing, in turning away the Son's heart. This recalls St John's phrase in the Prologue (Jn 1:1): 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God (pros ton Theon, which means turned towards God), and the Word was God'. . The devil has not succeeded in turning the Son's heart away, and so he is then completely available to receive God's gifts: "Behold, angels came and ministered to him."

NB At the request of some, I would also like to present the homily I am preparing for this first Sunday of Lent.

Homily – First Sunday of Lent

Every year, Lent begins with the story of Jesus' temptations in the desert: we must believe that this is a truly fundamental text! This year we read it according to St Matthew. After recounting the baptism of Jesus, Matthew immediately continues: "Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil." The evangelist thus invites us to make a connection between the baptism of Jesus and the temptations that immediately follow. When Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him. And a voice came from heaven, saying, 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased'. Jesus is the 'Son of God', the Messiah, the Saviour, the servant of God who will face the Tempter. Satan will say just that: "If you are the Son of God," thus revealing the real problem, which is the attempt to separate Jesus' divine identity from his way of living it, or better yet, to push Jesus to use his divine power without the trust of a son and his humanity without obedience. To understand this better, we must return to the first reading from the book of Genesis, where the tempting serpent promises Eve: "You will be like God" (Gen 3:5). The temptation is not only about a fruit that should not be eaten, but about autonomy from God, the desire to decide for oneself what is good and evil, without trusting the Father. Adam and Eve allowed themselves to be persuaded and found themselves naked. They lost everything!

In the desert, the devil now tempts Jesus, the new Adam, a true man like us except for sin, and launches three provocations: 1. "Say that these stones become bread." The temptation to live without depending on God, to seek immediate satisfaction. There is a hunger that goes beyond bread and that only God can satisfy. But this means trusting God, and Jesus responds: 'It is written: Man shall not live by bread alone' (Mt 4:4). 2nd temptation. The devil raises the stakes: "Throw yourself down" from the temple and the angels will catch you. Here is the temptation to manipulate God, to ask for spectacular signs to confirm one's faith. This is a very subtle temptation today, but one that is very common when we believe in making the liturgy, evangelisation and ecclesial events spectacular. Jesus teaches us to spread the Gospel like yeast in dough and a small seed in the ground: everything happens in silence because we must not believe that we are protagonists but lives always hidden in God, even when we act publicly. It is not our work to convert the world. Let us listen to Jesus who replies: "It is written: You shall not tempt the Lord your God" (Mt 4:7). . 3. In the third temptation, it should be noted that the Tempter no longer repeats 'If you are the Son of God', because Satan believes himself to be the master of the world and so he can say to him, 'I will give you everything if you bow down to me'. It is the temptation of power and compromise, of bending one's life to immediate advantages. It is very dangerous because it often involves the idea that we can accept anything in order to evangelise, but we are not the masters! Jesus replies: "It is written: You shall worship the Lord your God and him alone shall you serve" (Mt 4:10). 

Let us note something decisive: Jesus does not respond with his own intelligence or strength, but always by referring to the Word of God, which is the only true light that can guide man's journey through the desert of life, a journey that is often dark and full of pitfalls. This is because the Word of God is the light of truth that never goes out. St John Chrysostom reminds us: "In Scripture we find not only words, but the strength we need to overcome evil; it is the nourishment of the soul and the light that guides those who walk in darkness" (Homilies on Matthew, 4th century).   Even when the world rejects God, even when the right choices seem uncomfortable or losing, Scripture remains the sure guide. How can we apply this to our lives? Today, being a Christian is often difficult: faith can be mocked or ignored, the Gospel seems useless, Christ is fought against and sometimes tolerated, but not welcomed. Lent invites us to make a daily choice: who guides our lives? Do we want to do everything on our own, like Eve and Adam in Eden, choosing what seems most convenient? Or do we entrust ourselves to God, allowing his Word to enlighten our decisions and give meaning even to our difficulties? Following Christ means choosing fidelity, even when the world goes against it. It means living our lives as Christians without compromise, basing ourselves not on personal strength, but on the living Word of God. We are always sustained by a certain and concrete hope: the Gospel ends with a silent promise: 'Then the devil left him' (Mt 4:11). Those who entrust themselves to God are not left alone in their trials. Temptation may seem powerful, but those who walk in the light of the Word are never defeated.

+Giovanni D’Ercole

Ash Wednesday [18 February 2026]

May God bless us and the Virgin protect us! I am now sending the texts for Ash Wednesday and Wednesday those for Sunday.

*First Reading from the Book of the Prophet Joel (2:12-18)

'Return to the Lord with all your heart'. The book of the prophet Joel is one of the shortest in the Old Testament: it has only seventy-three verses, divided into four chapters, and is generally dated around 600 BC, shortly before the Exile to Babylon. Three major themes are constantly interwoven in this writing: the announcement of terrible scourges, real or symbolic; the urgent call to fasting and conversion; and finally, the proclamation of the salvation that God grants to his people. It is above all the second theme, that of conversion, which the liturgy proposes at the beginning of the Lenten journey. The invitation to conversion opens solemnly with the typical formula of the prophets: "The word of the Lord." It draws attention and asks us to take seriously what follows. And what follows is a decisive word: "Return". It is the fundamental verb of biblical penitential language. God invites his people to return to him, while the people, in turn, implore God to "return", that is, to grant forgiveness and mercy. This return to God must be expressed through fasting, tears and mourning: traditional signs of penance. However, the prophets, and Joel in particular, warn against the risk of stopping at outward appearances. For this reason, the prophet strongly affirms: "Rend your hearts and not your garments". Authentic conversion is not a matter of visible rituals, but a profound change of heart. Joel thus follows in the great prophetic tradition inaugurated by Isaiah, who denounced empty and formal worship, incapable of transforming life: God rejects solemn feasts and multiplied prayers when hands remain stained with injustice. What He asks for is a true purification of the heart and actions, the abandonment of evil and a concrete commitment to good and justice. The same message is expressed in a particularly intense way in Psalm 50/51, which defines true conversion as a "broken and humbled heart". In the light of Ezekiel, this image takes on an even deeper meaning: it is necessary for the heart of stone to be broken so that a heart of flesh may finally be born, capable of listening to God and living according to his will. When Joel calls for hearts to be torn, he means precisely this radical transformation of the human being. Conversion, in Joel's view, aims to obtain God's forgiveness and avert deserved punishment. The prophet reminds us that the Lord is 'tender and merciful, slow to anger and rich in love' and leaves open a hope: perhaps God will retrace his steps, renounce punishment and save his people from humiliation before the nations. But the final announcement exceeds all expectations: forgiveness is not only possible, it has already been granted. The liturgical translation speaks of a God who is 'moved' by his people, but the Hebrew text is even stronger: 'The Lord burns with zeal for his land and has compassion on his people'. This is not a cold or distant pity, but a passionate and faithful love. It remains to be discovered in biblical revelation that this mercy is not reserved for Israel alone. The book of Jonah shows this in a surprising way, recounting the conversion of Nineveh, the pagan city: faced with the fasting and change of life of its inhabitants, God renounces the punishment he had announced. The message is clear: the Lord "burns with zeal" for all people, even those who seem distant or unworthy.

This truth will find its definitive expression in the New Testament, when St Paul affirms that God has manifested his love in a radical way: Christ died for us while we were still sinners (Rom 5:8).

*Responsorial Psalm (50/51)

"Have mercy on me, O God, in your love; in your great mercy blot out my guilt. Wash me clean of my guilt, purify me from my sin." The people of Israel are gathered in the Temple in Jerusalem for a great penitential celebration. They recognise themselves as sinners, but they also know God's inexhaustible mercy. And, after all, if they gather to ask for forgiveness, it is precisely because they know in advance that forgiveness has already been granted. This was the great discovery of King David, who had brought his beautiful neighbour Bathsheba (the wife of an officer, Uriah, who was at war at the time) to his palace and slept with her, and she became pregnant. Some time later, Bathsheba let David know that she was expecting his child. At that point, David arranged for the death of her betrayed husband on the battlefield, so that he could definitively take possession of the woman and the child she was carrying. Now, and this is where God's unexpectedness comes in, when the prophet Nathan went to David, he did not first try to extract a confession of repentance from him; instead, he began by reminding him of all the gifts he had received from God and announcing his forgiveness, even before David had had time to make the slightest admission of guilt (cf. 2 Sam 12). In essence, he said to him, 'Look at all that God has given you... and know that he is ready to give you anything else you want!'. Israel has always been able to verify that God is truly a merciful and compassionate Lord, slow to anger, rich in faithful love, according to the revelation made to Moses in the desert (Ex 34:6). The prophets also reiterated this message, and the verses of the psalm we have heard are imbued with the discoveries of Isaiah and Ezekiel. Isaiah, for example, has God say: "I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins" (Isaiah 43:25). The proclamation of God's gratuitous forgiveness sometimes surprises us: it seems too good to be true; to some it even seems unfair. If everything is forgivable, what is the point of making an effort? It is to forget too quickly that all of us, without exception, need God's mercy: so let us not complain about it! And let us not be surprised if God surprises us, because, as Isaiah says, "God's thoughts are not our thoughts". And in forgiving, Isaiah points out, God surprises us more than anything else. Faced with the ever-renewed proclamation of God's mercy, the people of Israel recognise themselves as sinners. The confession is not detailed, as it never is in the penitential psalms, but the essential is said in this supplication: Have mercy on me, O God, in your love, in your great mercy, blot out my sin... And God, who is all mercy, expects nothing more than this simple recognition of our poverty. After all, the word 'mercy' has the same root as the word 'alms': literally, we are beggars before God. At this point, we have two things left to do.

Simply give thanks for this forgiveness that is continually given. When Israel turns to God, it always acknowledges the goodness with which He has filled it since the beginning of its history, and this shows that the most important prayer in a penitential celebration is the acknowledgement of God's gifts and forgiveness: we must begin by contemplating Him; only then, this contemplation, revealing the gap between Him and us, allows us to recognise ourselves as sinners: we confess God's love together with our sin. Then the song of gratitude will flow spontaneously from our lips when God opens our hearts. "Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise" (Psalm 50/51). Praise and thanksgiving can only arise in us if God opens our hearts and our lips. The second thing God expects of us is to forgive in turn, without delay or conditions... and that is quite a programme.

*Second reading from the second letter of St Paul to the Corinthians (5:20-6:2)

"Be reconciled to God," says Paul; but reconciliation implies that there is a quarrel: what quarrel is it? The men of the Old Testament discovered that God is not at odds with man. Psalm 102/103, for example, states: The Lord does not always contend, nor does he keep his anger forever; he does not treat us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities... Isaiah also invites the wicked to abandon their ways, the unrighteous to abandon their thoughts; return to the Lord, who will have compassion on you, to our God, who forgives abundantly (Is 55:7). And the book of Wisdom adds: 'You have mercy on all because you can do all things, and you turn away your gaze from the sins of men to lead them to repentance... You spare them all, because they are yours, Lord, who loves life... Your dominion over all makes you use clemency towards all' (Wisdom 11:23; 12:16). The men of the Bible experienced this, beginning with David. God knew that he had blood on his hands (after the killing of Uriah, Bathsheba's husband, 2 Sam 12), yet he sent the prophet Nathan to tell him in essence: "Everything you have, I have given you, and if that is not enough, I am ready to give you everything else you desire." God also knew that Solomon owed his throne to the elimination of his rivals, yet he listened to his prayer at Gibeon and granted it far beyond what the young king had dared to ask (1 Kings 3). Furthermore, God's very name — the Merciful One — means that he loves us even more when we are miserable. God, therefore, is not at odds with man; yet Paul speaks of reconciliation, because man has always been at odds with God. The text of Genesis (Genesis 2-3) attributes the accusatory phrase to the serpent: "God knows that on the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil" (Gen 3:4). In other words, man suspects that God is jealous and does not want his good. But since that voice is not natural to man (it is the serpent's), he can be healed of this suspicion. This is what Paul says: "It is God himself who calls you; we urge you in the name of Christ: be reconciled to God." And what did God do to remove this quarrel, this suspicion, from our hearts? He who knew no sin, God made him sin for us: Jesus knew no sin even for a moment, he was never at odds with the Father. Paul adds: 'He became obedient' (Phil 2:8), that is, trusting even through suffering and death. He sought to communicate to men this trust and the revelation of a God who is only love, forgiveness, and help for the little ones. Paradoxically, it was precisely for this reason that he was considered blasphemous, placed among sinners and executed as a cursed man (Deut 21:23). The darkness of men fell upon him, and God allowed it because it was the only way to make us realise how far his "zeal for his people" can go, as the prophet Joel says. Jesus suffered in the flesh the sin of men, their violence, their hatred, their rejection of a God of love. On the face of the crucified Christ, we contemplate the horror of human sin, but also God's gentleness and forgiveness. From this contemplation can come our conversion, our 'justification', as Paul says. They will look upon him whom they have pierced (cf. Zechariah 12:10; John 19:37). To discover in Jesus, who forgives his executioners, the very image of God means to enter into the reconciliation offered by God. We are left with the task of proclaiming this to the world: 'We are ambassadors for Christ', says Paul, considering himself sent on mission to his brothers and sisters. It is up to us to continue this mission, and this is probably the meaning of Paul's final quotation: "For it is written in Scripture: 'At the favourable time I answered you, on the day of salvation I helped you.'" Paul here takes up a phrase from Isaiah, who exhorted the Babylonian exiles to proclaim that the hour of God's salvation had come. In turn, Christ entrusted to the Church the task of proclaiming the forgiveness of sins to the world.

*From the Gospel according to Matthew (6:1-6, 16-18)

  Here we have two short excerpts from the Sermon on the Mount, which occupies chapters 5-7 of St Matthew; the entire sermon is built around its central core, the Lord's Prayer (6:9-13), which gives meaning to everything else. The recommendations we read today are not just moral advice: they concern the very meaning of faith. All our actions are rooted in the discovery that God is Father. Thus, prayer, almsgiving and fasting become paths to bring us closer to God the Father: fasting means learning to go out of ourselves, praying means centring ourselves on God, giving alms means centring ourselves on our brothers and sisters. Three times Jesus repeats similar, almost polemical formulations: Do not be like those who flaunt their piety.... It is important to remember how significant religious manifestations were in Jewish society at the time, with the inevitable risk of attributing too much value to outward gestures; and probably even prominent figures did not escape this! Matthew sometimes reports Jesus' rebukes to those who focused more on the length of their fringes than on mercy and faithfulness (Mt 23:5f). Here, however, Jesus invites his disciples to a truth operation: If you want to live as righteous people, avoid acting in front of others to be admired. Righteousness was the great concern of believers: and if Jesus mentions the pursuit of righteousness twice in the Beatitudes, it is because that term, that thirst, was familiar to his listeners: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied" (5:6); "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (5:10). True biblical justice consists in harmony with God's plan, not in the accumulation of practices, however noble they may seem. The famous phrase from Genesis — Abraham believed in the Lord, and it was credited to him as righteousness (Gen 15:6) — teaches us that justice is first and foremost righteousness, as in a musical instrument, a deep harmony with God's will.

The three practices — prayer, fasting, almsgiving — are paths to righteousness.

Prayer: let God guide us according to his plan: "Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." We wait for Him to teach us the true needs of the Kingdom. Jesus precedes the teaching of the Our Father with this recommendation: "When you pray, do not do as the pagans do... your Father knows what you need before you ask him (6:7-8).

Fasting: by ceasing to pursue what we believe is necessary for our happiness, which risks absorbing us more and more, we learn freedom and recognise true priorities; Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God (Mt 4:4).

Almsgiving: The word almsgiving comes from the same family as eleison: to give alms means to open one's heart to mercy. God wants the good of all his children; justice, understood as harmony with Him, inevitably includes a dimension of social justice. The parable of the Last Judgement (Mt 25:31-46) confirms this: "Come, blessed of my Father... for I was hungry and you gave me food... and the righteous will enter into eternal life." The behaviours that Jesus condemns — do not be like those who show off — are the opposite: they keep man centred on himself, closing his heart to the transforming action of the Spirit.

+Giovanni D'Ercole

VI Sunday in Ordinary Time (year A)  [15 February 2026]

May God bless us and may the Virgin protect us. The theme of the two paths, so dear to the prophets, touches on the theme of human freedom and responsibility. This Sunday's readings help us to better understand how not to go astray in life.

First Reading from the Book of Sirach (15:15-20 NV 15:16-21) 

God created us free, and Ben Sira the Wise offers us here a reflection on human freedom that is divided into three points: FIRST, evil is external to man; SECOND, man is free to choose between evil and good; THIRD, choosing good also means choosing happiness. FIRST: evil is external to man because it is not part of our nature, and this is already great news; because if evil were part of our nature, there would be no hope of salvation: we could never free ourselves from it. This, for example, was the conception of the Babylonians. In contrast, the Bible is much more optimistic: it affirms that evil is external to man; God did not create evil, and it is not he who drives us to commit it. He is therefore not responsible for the evil we commit. This is the meaning of the last verse of this reading: 'God has not commanded anyone to be wicked, nor has he given anyone permission to sin'. Shortly before this passage, Ben Sira writes: 'Do not say, "The Lord has led me astray... Do not say, "He has caused me to go astray"' (Sir 15:11-12).

If God had created Adam as a being who was partly good and partly evil, as the Babylonians imagined, evil would be part of our nature. But God is only love, and evil is totally foreign to him. The account of the fall of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis was written precisely to make it clear that evil is external to man, since it is introduced by the serpent and spreads throughout the world when man begins to distrust God. We find the same statement in the letter of St James: 'No one, when tempted, should say, 'Temptation comes from God'; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one'. In other words, evil is totally foreign to God: he cannot push us to do it. And St James continues: 'Each person is tempted when they are dragged away and enticed by their own desire' (Jas 1:13-14). SECOND: man is free and can choose evil or good. This certainty was slowly acquired by the people of Israel; yet, here too, the Bible is unequivocal: God created man free. For this certainty to mature in Israel, it was necessary for the people to experience God's liberating action at every stage of their history, beginning with the experience of liberation from Egypt. The entire faith of Israel was born from its historical experience: God is its liberator; and little by little it was understood that what is true today was already true at the moment of creation, and therefore it was deduced that God created man free. We must therefore learn to reconcile these two biblical certainties: that God is almighty and that, nevertheless, man is free before him. And it is precisely because man is free to choose that we can speak of sin: the very notion of sin presupposes freedom; if we were not free, our mistakes could not be called sins. Perhaps, in order to enter a little into this mystery, we must remember that God's omnipotence is that of love: we know well that only true love makes the other free. To guide man in his choices, God gave him his Law, and the book of Deuteronomy emphasises this strongly (cf. Dt 30:11-14).  THIRD: choosing good means choosing happiness. We read in the text: "Before men lie life and death, good and evil: to each will be given what he has chosen." In other words, it is in fidelity to God that man finds true happiness. To turn away from him means, sooner or later, to bring about one's own unhappiness. Figuratively speaking, man is constantly at a crossroads: two roads open up before him (the Bible speaks of two 'ways'). One way leads to light, joy and life: blessed are those who follow it. The other is a way of night and darkness and ultimately leads only to sadness and death. Unhappy are those who stray onto it. Here too, one cannot help but think of the story of the fall of Adam and Eve: their bad choice led them down the wrong path. The theme of the two paths is very common in the Bible, particularly in the book of Deuteronomy (30:15-20). According to the theme of the two paths, we are never definitively prisoners, even after making wrong choices, because it is always possible to turn back. Through Baptism, we are grafted onto Christ, who at every moment gives us the strength to choose the right path again: this is why we call him Redeemer, that is, Liberator. Ben Sira said that it is up to us to remain faithful and, as baptised persons, we must add: we remain faithful with the grace of Jesus Christ.

Responsorial Psalm (118/119)

This psalm perfectly echoes the first reading from Ben Sira: it is the same meditation that continues; the idea developed (in a different way, of course, but in full coherence) in these two texts is that humanity finds its happiness only in trust in God and obedience to his commandments: "Blessed is the one who is upright in his way and walks in the Law of the Lord". Misfortune and death begin for man when he strays from the path of serene trust. In fact, allowing suspicion of God and his commandments to enter our hearts and, as a result, doing as we please means taking a bad road with no way out. This is precisely the problem of Adam and Eve in the story of the fall in the Garden of Eden. We find, as if in filigree, the theme of the two paths mentioned in the first reading: if we listen to Ben Sira, we are perpetual travellers, forced to constantly check our path... Blessed among us are those who have found the right path! Because, of the two paths that constantly open up before us, one leads to happiness, the other to unhappiness. The believer experiences the sweetness of fidelity to God's commandments: this is what the psalm wants to tell us. It is the longest psalm in the Psalter (176 verses with 22 stanzas of 8 verses) and the few verses proposed today constitute only a very small part of it, the equivalent of a single stanza. Why twenty-two stanzas? Because there are twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet: each verse of each stanza begins with the same letter, and the stanzas follow each other in alphabetical order. In literature, we speak of an 'acrostic', although here it is not a matter of literary virtuosity, but of a true profession of faith: this psalm is a poem in honour of the Law, a meditation on God's gift, which is the Law, that is, the commandments. Indeed, rather than a psalm, it would be better to speak of a litany in honour of the Law: something that is rather foreign to us. In fact, one of the characteristics of the Bible, which is somewhat surprising to us, is the true love for the Law that dwells in the biblical believer. The commandments are not endured as a domination that God would exercise over us, but as advice, the only valid advice for leading a happy life. "Blessed are those who are upright in their ways, who walk according to the Law of the Lord": when the biblical man utters this phrase, he means it with all his heart. Obviously, this is not magic: men who are faithful to the Law may encounter all sorts of misfortunes in the course of their lives; but, in these tragic cases, the believer knows that only the path of trust in God can give him peace of mind. The Law is accepted as a gift that God gives to his people, warning them against all false paths; it is an expression of the Father's concern for his children, just as we sometimes warn a child or a friend against what we think is dangerous for them. It is said that God gives his Law, and it is truly considered a gift. In fact, God did not limit himself to freeing his people from slavery in Egypt; left to its own devices, Israel would have risked falling back into other forms of slavery that might have been even worse. By giving his Law, God was in a way offering a user manual for freedom. The Law is therefore an expression of God's love for his people. It must be said that we did not have to wait for the New Testament to discover that God is Love and that, ultimately, the Law has no other purpose than to lead us on the path of love. The entire Bible is the story of the chosen people's learning in the school of love and fraternal life. The book of Deuteronomy stated: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength" (Deut 6:4). And the book of Leviticus continued: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself' (Lev 19:18). Later, Jesus, combining these two commandments, was able to say that they summarise the entire Jewish Law. Let us return to the Beatitude of the first verse of this psalm: 'Blessed is the man who follows the Law of the Lord'. The word "blessed," as we have already learned, can be translated as "on the way," so the meaning of this verse would be: "Walk with confidence, man who observes the Law of the Lord." The biblical man is so convinced that his life and happiness are at stake that this litany I mentioned earlier is actually a prayer. After the first three verses, which are statements about the happiness of men faithful to the Law, the remaining 173 verses address God directly, in a style that is sometimes contemplative, sometimes supplicatory, with invocations such as: "Open my eyes, that I may behold the wonders of your Law". And the litany continues, repeating almost the same formulas over and over again: for example, in Hebrew, the same eight terms are always used in each stanza to describe the Law. Only lovers dare to repeat themselves like this, without risking weariness. Eight words that are always the same and also eight verses in each of the twenty-two stanzas: the number eight, in the Bible, is the number of the new Creation. The first Creation was accomplished by God in seven days; the eighth day will therefore be that of the renewed Creation, of the 'new heavens and the new earth', according to another biblical expression. It will finally be able to manifest itself when all humanity lives according to God's Law, that is, in love, since it is the same thing. Other elements of the symbolism of the number eight: there were four human couples (eight people) in Noah's ark; Christ's resurrection took place on Sunday, which is both the first and eighth day of the week. For this reason, the baptisteries of the early centuries were often octagonal; even today, we still see numerous octagonal bell towers.

FURTHER INSIGHT: the eight terms in the vocabulary of the Law, considered synonyms that express the different facets of God's love that is given in his Law: Commandments: to order, to command; Law: derives from a root that does not mean 'to prescribe' but 'to teach'; it indicates the way to God. It is a pedagogy, an accompaniment that God offers us: a gift; Word: the Word of God is always creative, a word of love: 'God said... and so it came to pass' (Gen 1). We know well that 'I love you' is also a creative word; Promise: the Word of God is always promise and faithfulness; Judgements: dealing with justice; Decrees: from the verb 'to engrave', 'to write on stone' (the tablets of the Law); Precepts: what God has entrusted to us; Testimonies: of God's faithfulness.

Second Reading from the Letter of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians (2:6-10)

Last Sunday, St Paul already contrasted human wisdom with the wisdom of God: 'Your faith', he said, 'is not based on human wisdom, but on the power of God'. And he insisted that the mystery of Christ has nothing to do with our reasoning: in the eyes of men, the Gospel appears to be madness, and those who stake their lives on it are foolish. This insistence on the term 'wisdom' may surprise us, but Paul is addressing the Corinthians, that is, the Greeks, for whom wisdom is the most precious virtue.

Today, Paul continues along the same lines: the proclamation of the mystery of God may seem like folly in the eyes of the world, but it is an infinitely higher wisdom, the wisdom of God. 'Among those who are perfect, we do speak of wisdom, but of a wisdom that is not of this world... we speak instead of the wisdom of God'. It is up to us to choose whether to live according to the wisdom of the world, the spirit of the world, or according to the wisdom of God: two totally contradictory wisdoms. Here we return to the theme of the other readings for this Sunday: the first reading from the book of Sirach and Psalm 118/119 both developed, each in its own way, the theme of the two paths: man is placed at the crossroads of two paths and is free to choose his own way; one path leads to life and happiness; the other sinks into darkness, death, and ultimately offers only false joys. 'The wisdom of God that has remained hidden' (v. 7): one of the great affirmations of the Bible is that man cannot understand everything about the mystery of life and creation, nor the mystery of God himself. This limitation is part of our very being. In this regard, we read in Deuteronomy: 'The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things are for us and our children forever, that we may put into practice all the words of this Law' (Deut 29:28). This means that God knows everything, and we know only what he has chosen to reveal to us, beginning with the Law, which is the key to everything else. Let us return once more to the book of Genesis, which tells of the Garden of Eden, where there were trees of every kind, 'pleasing to the eye and good for food' (Gen 2:9); and there were also two special trees: one, located in the middle of the garden, was the tree of life; the other, located in an unspecified place, was called the tree of the knowledge of what makes one happy or unhappy. Adam was allowed to eat the fruit of the tree of life; indeed, it was recommended, for God had said, "You may eat of every tree in the garden... except one." Only the fruit of the tree of knowledge was forbidden. This is a figurative way of saying that man cannot know everything and must accept this limitation: Hidden things belong to the Lord our God, says Deuteronomy. On the contrary, the Torah, the Law, which is the tree of life, is entrusted to man: practising the Law means nourishing ourselves day after day with what will make us live.

I return to this expression: Wisdom kept hidden, established by God before the ages for our glory (cf. v7). Paul insists several times in his letters that God's plan has been established from all eternity and there has never been a rethinking or a change because the unfolding of God's plan does not change according to the behaviour of humanity: we cannot imagine that God first created a perfect world until the day Adam committed his sin and then, to make amends, decided to send his Son. Against this conception, Paul develops in many of his letters the idea that the role of Jesus Christ has been planned from all eternity and that God's plan precedes all human history. He says this clearly in his letter to the Ephesians (cf. Eph 1:9-10) and in his letter to the Romans (cf. Rom 16:25-26). The fulfilment of this plan, as Paul says, is 'to give us glory': glory is an attribute of God and God alone, and our vocation is to share in his glory. For Paul, this expression is another way of speaking about God's plan to bring us all together in Jesus Christ and make us share in the glory of the Trinity, as we read in the letter to the Ephesians. St Paul writes again: But as it is written: 'What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, God has prepared for those who love him' (v. 9). When he says 'as it is written', he is referring to the prophet Isaiah, who says: "Never before has anything like this been heard or seen, nor has any eye seen a god who acts on behalf of those who trust in him" (Is 64:3). Here is the amazement of the believer gratified by the revelation of God's mysteries. And he continues: "God has prepared these things for those who love him". But could there be people for whom this would not have been prepared? Are there therefore privileged and excluded people? Certainly not: God's plan is for everyone; but only those who have an open heart can participate in it, and each person is the sole master of their own heart. It is the theme of trust in God because the mystery of his providential plan is revealed only to the little ones, as Jesus says: "You have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little ones" (cf. Mt 11:25 and Lk 10:21). Since we are all little ones, we need only recognise this humbly and with trust in God. 

From the Gospel according to Matthew (5:17-37)

The Kingdom advances slowly but surely. This Gospel of Matthew 5 allows us to understand how the Kingdom of God advances in history: not by breaking, but by fulfilling. The key verb that St Matthew puts on Jesus' lips is 'I have not come to abolish, but to fulfil'. The whole Bible, from Abraham onwards, is oriented towards a progressive fulfilment of God's benevolent plan. Christians, in fact, do not live in nostalgia for the past, but in active expectation: they judge history not on the basis of immediate successes, but on the progress of the Kingdom. This is why we can say that Sunday Mass is the 'meeting of the Kingdom's construction site': the place where we see whether the Gospel is really transforming life. It is a slow growth, inscribed in the Law.  The evangelist shows that this slowness is not a defect, but God's own method. The Law given to Moses represented the first steps: indicating the minimum necessary for coexistence to be possible – do not kill, do not steal, do not lie. It was already a decisive step forward from the law of the strongest. Jesus does not cancel these achievements; on the contrary, he brings them to maturity. The antitheses ('You have heard that it was said... but I say to you...') manifest this advancement of the Kingdom: not only avoiding murder, but eradicating anger; not only avoiding adultery, but purifying the gaze; not only avoiding false oaths, but living in the truth of the word. Each time the Kingdom takes a step forward, because the human heart is slowly converted. And so the Kingdom grows through relationships. The text highlighted a decisive point: the commandments renewed by Jesus all concern relationships with others: reconciliation with one's brother, respect for women, trustworthy speech, love of one's enemy. If God's merciful plan is, as Paul says, to reunite everyone in Christ, then every step towards a truer brotherhood is already an advance of the Kingdom. This is why Jesus does not limit himself to teaching us to pray 'Thy Kingdom come', but shows us how to bring it about: through concrete, daily choices, often hidden but real. At the beginning of his discourse, Matthew presents the Beatitudes that describe those who allow the Kingdom to advance: not the powerful, but the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers. It is to the little ones that the Father reveals his mysteries. Here too, the Kingdom does not advance by force or spectacle, but by humility and fidelity.

The Kingdom advances like salt that disappears and like light that shines without noise. It is growth that is measured over the long term, not in the immediate. This is why Jesus can say at the end of the chapter: 'Be perfect' (Mt 5:48), that is, brought to fulfilment. It is not an unattainable ideal, but the goal of a journey that God himself accompanies. The Kingdom of God does not burst in, but grows; it does not eliminate the past, but brings it to fulfilment; it does not advance by force, but by conversion of heart. Every step forward in love, every reconciled relationship, every word made true: this is how, slowly but surely, the Kingdom comes.

+Giovanni D'Ercole