Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time/C
Massimo Palombella
(1426-1432), Cattedrale di San Bavone (Gand, Belgio)
In today’s Gospel (Lk 12:49-53) Jesus challenges a certain notion of “peace”, of “common sense” that perhaps, implicitly, culturally belongs to us. In fact, the “peace” that Jesus did not come to bring is exactly that where being, precisely, “in peace” coincides with the absence or rejection of problems, with being in a situation of perennial dependence, with the fundamental “separations” of life not having occurred. This kind of peace, in a certain culture, including ecclesial culture, is often confused with balance, common sense, and those who are comfortable in this situation and somehow seek it, turn out to be the people of trust, the ones indicated to have responsibility. Jesus challenges us in the heart of our human maturating process by telling us without half-measures that true peace is not a situation of stillness, but is a continuous conquest that is the fruit of healthy – and even painful – separations, where I must seek the truth, the true good, and all this inevitably generates tension, destabilisation, what exactly happens when we live in “reality”. If our relationship with the Lord is authentic, we are slowly led into reality, crush those ‘bubbles’ we construct in order not to feel pain, to question our relationships – even the ancestral ones – in order to acquire that healthy autonomy of judgement, of decision that slowly sculpts the face of the person we can, should and are called to be.
The Communion antiphon for today’s celebration is taken from chapter VI of the Gospel of Matthew (Mt 6:33) with the following text:
Primum quaerite regnum Dei, et omnia adicientur vobis, dicit Dominus.
(Seek first the kingdom of God, and all the rest w ill be given to you in addition, says the Lord).
The attached music, in Gregorian chant, is taken from the Graduale Triplex published in Solesmes in 1979. The music track can be found on YouTube, where there are no indications about the interpretation.
A blessed Sunday and heartfelt greetings.
