XXVIIth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Massimo Palombella
In today’s Gospel (Lk 17:5-10) Jesus, responding to the apostles about increasing their faith, focuses on what our true relationship with God should be. In fact, with the challenging example of the mulberry tree uprooting itself and going to plant itself in the sea, Jesus points to a precise relationship with God that slowly enables us to face things that are seemingly “impossible”, or that we think they are.
Entering into a true and living relationship with God means abandoning, not without effort, that god we invent to make ourselves seemingly comfortable, that god we pray to when we have time and use so that he endorses our plans and choices. In essence, that god we use to run our lives and to whom we complain when things don’t go as we absolutely intended.
To have faith, as Jesus describes, means to move from an invented god to the real God. And if our relationship is with the real God, we find that we slowly move from illusion to reality, we face our problems, we name our fears, we take responsibility, we make those necessary separations, we tell and do the truth.
The temptation to invent a god is very subtle, at every age of life, and it is precisely in this temptation that the true God awaits us to love us in our fears, in our pains, in what we fail at, in our unsolved recurrences. The true God who leads us to face what we have decided is impossible, the true God who takes us down unthinkable paths, who enhances our humanity in ways we never thought possible. The true God who never abandons us, who is always there beyond all our childish inventions.
The Communion antiphon for today’s celebration is taken from Psalm 118 (Ps. 118, 81, 84, 86) with the following text:
“In salutari tuo anima mea, et in verbum tuum speravi:
Quando facies de persequentibus me judicium?
Iniqui persecuti sunt me, adjuva me, Domine Deus meus.”
(My soul aspires after your salvation; I hope in your word;
when will you judge those who persecute me? T
he wicked are persecuting me; come to my assistance, O Lord my God).
The attached music, in Gregorian Chant, is taken from the Graduale Triplex published in Solesmes in 1979. The interpretation is by the “Schola Cantorum de Barcelona”. The musical track can be found on the CD “Gregorià Popular. Música per la Catedral” published by Codex in 2015.
A blessed Sunday and heartfelt greetings.
