by Don Ruggero Gorletti
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MONDAY OF THE THIRTEENTH WEEK OF ORDINARY TIME
From the second gospel Matteo 8,18-22
At that time, seeing the crowd around him, Jesus ordered them to cross over to the other side. Then a scribe approached him and said, “Master, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus answered him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” And another of his disciples said to him, “Lord, allow me to go and bury my father first.” But Jesus answered him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.”
COMMENT
A scribe, fascinated by the words of Jesus, decides to follow him. Jesus seems to dismantle it. He points out to him that the mission is not a comfortable thing to choose to ensure a protected and peaceful future. He must face it with the awareness that he may encounter difficulties and with the will to overcome them. To another disciple he says a phrase that leaves us stunned (“Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead”). But we must understand well the purpose for which Jesus speaks in this way. The Lord wants to mean that the mission of announcing the gospel is something urgent, before which all the other demands of life, even the most just, pale. Jesus does not ask us to be inhuman, but uses paradoxes to make us understand that in life there is nothing more important and more urgent than following the Lord and announcing his love for us, and the need to reciprocate it . That’s all that matters in life. Everything else, even if important, is destined to pass.
