Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time/C
Massimo Palombella
In today’s Gospel (Lk 6:27-38) Jesus asks his disciples, in a clear and direct way, to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, to bless those who curse us and to pray for those who mistreat us. These are not simple requests, and what lies behind them is something very profound that involves, if we are honest, our ancestral relationships. In fact, we only become capable of a benevolent look at those who make us suffer when we begin to connect the suffering we experience today with that of our past. Often those who make us suffer, those we perceive as ‘enemies’ are simply the projection of what ancestrally made us suffer. Before the non-consideration of someone – who makes us suffer so much – there is the non-consideration of our father, of our mother; before perceiving someone as a threat – and therefore as a potential enemy – there is often the failure to place what we suffered as children as a threat. And the examples could multiply. Basically, the Lord asks us, beyond a “voluntaristic” dimension (which in our life remains important and fundamental to start any journey) to meet our sufferings, our not easy ancestral relationships, to take on everything and go “beyond”. Only in this way can we slowly mature that necessary benevolent and merciful look at reality, at each person, at those who have made us suffer today and in the past. In this regard, with disarming realism, Oscar Wilde in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ states: ‘At first, children love their parents; as they grow older, they judge them; sometimes they forgive them’. To go “beyond” means to perceive that truly “all is grace”. This is to be inserted into the same logic of God who “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and makes it rain on the just and on the unjust” (Mt 5:45), it is to begin to taste what “life in abundance” really means.
The Communion antiphon of today’s celebration is taken from Psalm 9 (Ps 9:2. 3) with the following text:
Narrabo omnia mirabilia tua:
laetabor et exsultabo in te:
psallam nomini tuo, Altissime.
(I will relate all your wondrous deeds.
I will be glad and rejoice in you;
I will sing to the honour of your name, O Most High).
The attached music, in Gregorian Chant, is taken from the Gradual Triplex published in Solesmes in 1979. The interpretation is by the Gregorian Choristers of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Milan conducted by Fulvio Rampi. The musical track can be found on the CD ‘Canto Gregoriano’ published by Rusty Records in 2003.
A blessed Sunday and heartfelt greetings.
