Sixth Sunday of Easter
The sharing: feast in the heaven and in the earth
May God be gracious to us and bless us; may his face shine upon us. So shall your way be known upon the earth, your victory among all the nations. May the peoples praise you, God; may all the peoples praise you! May the nations be glad and rejoice; for you judge the peoples with fairness, you guide the nations upon the earth. May the peoples praise you, God; may all the peoples praise you! The earth has yielded its harvest; God, our God, blesses us. May God bless us still; that the ends of the earth may revere him. Psa 66
After having spent his day to the full service of the neighbour, Father Arthur by some day was walking quickly in a woody road. He was back from his convent of Busto Arsizio and he was hungry, because he had no food since several hours. Then he said to the Lord: “I am hungry!”. After some time a car drove along the same road and a bag was thrown out from the window. Father Arthur collected it: there were two sandwiches. “Let’s think how much good the Lord is! – he exclaimed by night time when he came to our house – “he allowed that so many things could be thrown away to make me eating”. Don Giulio Facibeni, the uncle of the aunt Margherita, who has been recently beatified by the Church, was in a line in front of the box of the post office, to pay a recently overdue payment request, without having the sufficient money to do it. When it was his turn, he said to the employee: “I have not all the necessary amount, what can I do?” A gentleman, who had listened and who was aware of the activity which Don Giulio had started in Florence in favour of the war orphans, intervened by saying: “I pay the difference”. “Thank you – the priest said – I will remember you in my prayers”. Presently we have under way some restoration works in our house in Castiglioncello, to have our sons and grandsons better enjoying their holydays and to play together. We had not all the necessary amount of money to face that obligation, but, trusting in the Providence of the Lord, we started and the Lord allowed that we had some extra professional engagements such that we had been able to fully pay the executors of those works. These are things which happens every day to the people who have entrusted their life in the hands of the Lord. These are exceptional modes by which the providence is visible in the moments of peculiar needs and because of these interventions we can sing: ”May the peoples praise you, God; may all the peoples praise you!” as the psalm of today exhorts to do. However we have to praise the Lord not only for his exceptional interventions, but also for the positive mode of our professional work, by which any day he benefits us: “The earth has yielded its harvest; God, our God, blesses us”. The Lord is indeed a great gentleman! There is, however, a behavior which we have to follow to the purpose of having the Lord blessing us every day via his providence: the sharing. When we share with the neighbor what we have received from him, he participates to our joy. The sharing is the reason because of which we have to celebrate both in the heaven and in the earth.