Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The communication
“Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow.’ But I say to you, do not swear at all; not by heaven, for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make a single hair white or black. Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one. Mt 5,33-37
The today gospel closes up with a short, trenchant, severe admonishment. Jesus admonishes for an increasingly simple and direct communication, which presents the truth with frankness, without verbal frills and oaths. It remembers, by contrast, the texts on the false communication, which is possible to be recognized from the ample quantity of words which is required by the man who tries to sell the false in place of the truth. And, if the listening person is puzzled in believing to him, he tries to capture it by an increasing of statements, up to make recourse to the oaths. The communication which proposes the truth, on the contrary, is linear and easy to be understood, because such is always the truth. Even the great discovery of the science and the laws which rule the universe can be explained to the children with their same language, because it is possible to make the reality comprehensible, if we remain faithful to it. In our family the lessons of astronomy which the grandmother Rita was used to give to the grandsons in the garden of Castigliocello have remained unforgettable. The youngest were listening by open mouth and all of them were understanding quite well the law of the universal gravitation. It is very difficult, for us as adults, to be able to follow the pseudo-thoughts of the largest part of the political world or the complicated and twisted considerations of the laical culture which would like to mine our faith, by insinuating sophistical and corrosive doubts. We can be aided by the words of the gospel, which not only admonish to speak with simple words, but also recall to us that the real truths are understood mostly by the one capable to make himself small as a child.