33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Luke wrote his Gospel around the year 85 A.D. In the fifty years that passed since the death and resurrection of Jesus, tremendous events occurred. There were wars, political revolutions, catastrophes and the temple of Jerusalem was destroyed. Christians became victims of injustices and persecutions. How to explain these dramatic events?
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
The feature that is most disturbing about our age is the crisis of hope. We have lost sight of the horizon of a final Future, and the small hopes of this life end up not consoling us. This vacuum of hope is generating the loss of trust in this life for all too many people. Nothing is worth it.
31st Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Unlike what he did with the rich young man (Lk 18:18-23), Jesus did not ask Zacchaeus to “sell everything and to distribute his assets to the poor.” He did not reprimand him nor put any condition. He only asked to be welcomed.
Solemnity of All Saints
Let us ask ourselves which side we are on: that of heaven or that of earth? Do we live for the Lord or for ourselves, for eternal happiness or for some immediate gratification? Let us ask ourselves: do we truly want holiness? Or are we content with being Christians without infamy and without praise?
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican usually awakens in many Christians a big rejection of the Pharisee who comes before God as someone arrogant and self-assured, along with a spontaneous sympathy for the Publican. Paradoxically, the story could awaken in us this sentiment: «I give you thanks, my God, that I’m not like this Pharisee».
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
The Lord alerts the community against this danger represented by discouragement and resignation of the thought that the Spouse is not coming any more to render justice. He will surely come, but will he find his chosen ones ready to welcome him? To someone, his slowness could cause a loss of faith!
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
It was said in the time of Jesus: “Four categories of persons are treated as dead: the poor, the leper, the blind, and the childless.” The lepers felt rejected by all: by people and by God.
27th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
The major trouble provoked by the religion of merits is to reduce God to an accountant in charge of maintaining the account books in order and signing accurately the debits and credits of each one. The parable wants to destroy this image of God.
26th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Commenting on this parable, St. Ambrose said: “When you give something to the poor, you don’t offer him what is yours, you give back what is his because the earth and the goods of this world are of all people, not of the rich.”
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
The administrator was shrewd—says the Lord—because he understood on which to bet on: not on goods, products that he was entitled to, that could rot or be stolen, but on friends. He knew how to renounce the first in order to conquer for himself the second. This is the point.
24th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Will we get on the road to God our Father? Many would do that if they would know that God who, according to Jesus’ parable, «ran to his son, clasped him in his arms and kissed him over and over». Those embraces and those kisses speak of God’s love better than every theology book written.
23th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
The Gospel reading for today is one of those that we would be tempted to smooth out and sweeten because it seems too hard for men of today: “If anyone follows me without hating his father, his mother.”
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
It is the eternal problem of the Church: everyone should serve, but, in practice, there is always someone who aspires for honorary titles, wants to excel, swells with pride and comes to transform even the Eucharist, an occasion for self-celebration. Here’s the cancer that destroys our communities!
21st Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Jesus did not want to scare with the threat of hell. His condemnation is directed against tepid, inconsistent, hypocritical life led today by many who consider themselves his disciples. Yet even in the face of his disturbing words, there are Christians who do not allow themselves to be touched by doubt that one day he will tell them: “I know you not.”
20th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
The message of Jesus is a fire and—logically—who has the goods to be protected, buildings to be preserved is not keen to see the arsonists. The Gospel is a burning torch that wants to reduce to an immense fire all the unjust structures, the inhuman situations, discrimination, greed of money, the frenzy of power.
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Mary—the “handmaid of the Lord”—is presented today to all believers not as a privileged one, but as the most excellent model, as the sign of destiny that awaits every person who believes “that the Lord’s word would come true” (Lk 1:45).
19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
A heart full of desire. We all have desires. The poor ones are those who have no desire, no desire to go forward, toward the horizon; and for us Christians this horizon is the encounter with Jesus, the very encounter with him, who is our life, our joy, our happiness.
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Greed is not limited to wealth. It can take the form of the accumulation of anything unnecessary. For example, greed for power is almost as common as greed for wealth, and people can also be greedy for things like social connections or experiences. In each case, the thing desired becomes a counterfeit of life itself.
17th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
For Christians, God is the Father, by whom they have been thought of and loved “before being formed in secret, woven in the depths of the earth” (Ps 109:15). When they turn to him—standing (not kneeling)—they call him Father.
16th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
The passage ends with the words of Jesus to Martha (vv. 41-42), but it seems unfinished. The dialogue between the two should be continued, but Luke does not report it. He seems to want to draw the attention of his readers to another detail which can go unnoticed: the silence of Mary.
15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Incense, chants, endless prayers with which one tries to replace the concrete commitment in favor of the orphan, the widow, the oppressed are repugnant to God (Is 1:11-17). Jesus mentions several times the phrase of the prophet Hosea: “What I want is mercy, not sacrifice” (Mt 9:13; 12:7).
14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
The purpose of the missioning: to prepare the city and the villages for the coming of the Lord. Jesus arrives after his messengers, not before. The task given to each apostle is not to represent himself, but to dispose the minds and hearts of the people to accept Christ in their lives.
13th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Luke introduces the resolute decision of Jesus to go to Jerusalem, saying that he “sets his face hard.” It is a strong expression, taken from the Old Testament. The prophet Isaiah puts it on the lips of the Servant of the Lord who declares his determination to fulfill his mission: “Like a flint I set my face” (Is 50:7).
Feast of Corpus Christi (C)
Jesus did not leave us a statue, a photograph, a relic. He wanted to continue to be present among his disciples as nourishment. The food is not placed on the table to be contemplated but to be consumed.
Feast of the Holy Trinity (C)
It is the fifth time that, in John’s the Gospel, Jesus promises to send the Spirit, and says it will be the Spirit to carry out the project of the Father. Without his work people could never be able to accept salvation.
Pentecost Sunday (C)
Now Jesus promises another Paraclete, who has not the task of replacing him, but to accomplish his very own mission. The Spirit is the Paraclete because comes to the rescue of the disciples in their struggle against the world, that is, against the forces of evil (Jn 16:7-11).
Feast of the Ascension of the Lord (C)
The certainty of the Ascension reverses our human perspective. While the years pass, the Christian is satisfied because he sees the days of the definitive encounter with Christ coming soon. He is happy to have lived, does not envy the young ones but looks at them with tenderness.
6th Sunday of EASTER (C)
A hasty reading of today’s Gospel can give the impression of finding ourselves facing a series of unrelated sentences and the problems of our lives. The passage, however, is not at all confusing or abstract; it is only very dense. Let’s put it in simple terms.
5th Sunday of EASTER (C)
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another” (v. 35). We know that the fruits do not make the tree alive, however, they are signs that the tree is alive. Good works do not make our communities Christian, but these works give evidence that our communities are animated by the Spirit of the Risen One.
4th Sunday of EASTER (C)
How to recognize among many voices, that of the true Shepherd? It is necessary to accustom the ear. He who hears a person only for five minutes and then for a year does not hear him anymore, will find it difficult to distinguish the other’s voice in the crowd.
3rd Sunday of EASTER (C)
John wants the Christians of his community to come to understand that Jesus, while being on the “shore,” that is, in the glory of the Father, is always beside them every day and continues to resonate his voice, calling, talking, and indicating what they should do.
2nd Sunday of EASTER (C)
How can we see him? Like the disciples: through his wounds. Gazing upon those wounds, the disciples understood the depth of his love. They understood that he had forgiven them, even though some had denied him and abandoned him. To enter into Jesus’ wounds is to contemplate the boundless love flowing from his heart.
EASTER Vigil and Easter Sunday (C)
We, like Peter and the women, cannot discover life by being sad, bereft of hope. Let us not stay imprisoned within ourselves, but let us break open our sealed tombs to the Lord – each of us knows what they are – so that he may enter and grant us life. Let us give him the stones of our rancour and the boulders of our past, those heavy burdens of our weaknesses and falls.
Palm or Passion Sunday (C)
At the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus manifests himself to the shepherds: the last, despised people, the unclean of Israel. Then he spent his public life among tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes. At the end with those who die: not with the saints. Also at the end—it was to be expected—he is among those he most loved: the sinners.
5th Sunday of Lent (C)
This page of the Gospel today does not disturb less than yesterday. It does not leave tranquil those who continue to claim the right, from the unassailable fortress of their respectability, of hurling stones no longer with the hands, but defaming, isolating, uttering harsh judgments, fueling distrust, spreading gossips.
4th Sunday of Lent (C)
We must celebrate and rejoice—says the text (v. 24). They began only because every time one of the children goes out, the feast stops. It will be final and without end only when the door will be closed and all the children will be inside.
3rd Sunday of LENT (C)
Unlike other evangelists who speak of a barren fig tree that is made almost instantly dry (Mk 11:12-24; Mt 21:18-22), Luke, the evangelist of mercy, introduces another year of waiting, before the definitive intervention. He presents a God who is patient, tolerant of human weakness, including the hardness of our mind and our heart.
2nd Sunday of Lent (C)
Jesus listens to the Law and the Prophets who spoke to him about his death and Resurrection. In his intimate dialogue with the Father, he did not depart from history, he did not flee the mission for which he came into the world, although he knew that to attain glory he would have to pass through the Cross.
1st Sunday of Lent (C)
Luke above all speaks of every kind of temptation, therefore, the three frames he depicted had to be interpreted as a synthesis of all the temptations. They represent, in a schematic way, the wrong ways of dealing with three realities: with things, with people, with God.
8th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Jesus wants that the Christian proposal is made with great humility, with great discretion and respect and, above all, never judging those who cannot understand it, those who do not feel like accepting it. The possibility of having a log in front of the eyes is not remote and must not be forgotten!
7th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
There are three categories of people: on the lowest rung are the wicked (those who, while still receiving the good, they do evil); higher are the righteous (those who respond to the good with good and evil with evil); finally there are those who respond to evil with good. Only they are the children of God.
6th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
The rabbis of Jesus’ time often used the literary form of beatitudes and curses. Jesus also directs his compliments (“blessed” means: Congratulations for the choice you have made). He addresses them to four categories of persons and warns against other opposite, dangerous choices because they are attractive and apparently gratifying.
5th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Today’s readings present some characters who are called to carry out a mission of proclaiming the Word of God. They all have the same reaction: they feel unworthy, incapable, inadequate. Isaiah declares to be a man of unclean lips. Peter asks Jesus to turn away from him because he knows he is a sinner. Paul says that…
4th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
When reading the Gospel, we come across details that appear strange and improbable, there is reason to rejoice: they are valuable signs; they are an invitation to go beyond the mere matter of record and to seek the deeper meaning of the episode.
3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Three chapters separate the second part of today’s passage (Lk 4:14-21) from the first. It is the beginning of Jesus’ public life in his country, Galilee, and the narrated episode—which Matthew and Mark place around the middle of their Gospel—is for Luke the programmatic overture, the synthesis of all the activity of Jesus.
2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
The Gospel of John is like a vast ocean: it can be contemplated on the surface or in depth. From the shore, the rippling waves, the unfolding of the sails, the reflections of light and color fascinate. But the most intense emotions are for those who have a chance to gear up and go down to the bottom, where the most unexpected and varied forms of life…
Baptism of the Lord (C)
Today’s Gospel opens with a significant finding, “the people were in expectation.” It is easy to imagine what they are waiting for: the slave expected freedom, the poor a new condition of life, the exploited laborer hoped for justice, the sick healing, and the humiliated and raped woman the recovery of dignity.
Epiphany of the Lord
The Magi thus personify all those who believe, those who long for God, who yearn for their home, their heavenly homeland. They reflect the image of all those who in their lives have not let their hearts be anesthetized.
Mary, Mother of God
The council taught us to look upon Mary as a “figure” of the Church, that is, as the Church’s perfect exemplar, as the first fruits of the Church. But can Mary be a model of the Church even as “Mother of God,” the title with which she is honored this day? Can we become mothers of Christ?
Feast of the Holy Family (C)
Faced with the often inexplicable and incomprehensible events there is only one correct attitude: “To keep all these things in our hearts,” as Mary did and ponder them in the light of the Word of God. It was not also easy for her to understand and accept the path to which God wanted his son to tread.
