Fr Marco Lazzaron
fter the Easter Season and the three great feasts of Pentecost, Holy Trinity, and Corpus Domini we are back to the Ordinary Time (you can get just by looking at the color of the liturgical vestments!) This will continue until November when we celebrate the solemnity of Christ the King. Today’s readings offer us two reflections: one of sin (first reading and gospel), the other of God’s mercy (psalm and second reading).
In the passage from Genesis, we find the story of original sin which we could also define as the fragility and sometimes difficulty of entering God’s plan. The characters in the story try to unload their guilt on others and God himself. This is because, in the face of sin, we feel naked, defenseless, and exposed to judgment. Unfortunately, that of Adam and Eve is the sin that constantly accompanies us in our lives, that of pride, self-sufficiency, and feeling superior to all those around us, including God. But God is not indifferent to our mistakes, he doesn’t mind, because he knows us well, because he created us.
Saint Paul, in the second reading, reminds us that Jesus strengthens us in fragility and difficult moments. Paul speaks of the discouragement we feel in the difficult relationship between theory and practice. He indicates the path which is to overcome the “visible” things that cause us tribulations, and to always aim for the invisible things. However, we must recognize that it is difficult to discern what is good from what is bad, since the temptation of appearance, risks always being present in us.
Jesus offers us free and conscious adhesion to his humanity project to defeat, with Him, the kingdom of Satan. We know that this commitment, capable of going against instinct, against the current, is difficult in this world of ours. The believer is a man of hope. Hope is not passive waiting, it is not the dream of unlikely random changes, but the certainty that good is already present, it is the ability to create the best conditions for it to emerge. Too many Christians are well integrated into the world around them. Conformism is an easy and apparently successful attitude, while the courage to keep oneself out of fashions, habits, moral compromises, unscrupulous affairs, and the measures of common sense appears to be losing.
We ask the Lord to help us overcome the condition of sin inherent in our humanity, to always be his witnesses in the family, in society, and at work, capable of assuming our responsibilities and removing from us the temptation to blame others.
For reflection as a couple and as a family.
– This Sunday’s readings invite us to reflect on the risk and consequences of self-sufficiency (living as if God did not exist): how do we experience this in our lives?
– Jesus warns us to be careful not to sin against the Holy Spirit, and Saint Paul translates this as not being discouraged if we experience a contradiction between theory and practice. At what point are we?