In today’s first reading Ben Sirach is speaking of Elijah, the great prophet who understood what dangerous paths Israel was taking and had the courage to raise his voice, even if, for this reason, he had a lot of serious problems.

He was the authentic spokesman of God, he rebuked, he upset, he also condemned with words “as a flaming furnace”, words of passion for God and his people. Elijah was not uprooted from history: he was fully integrated in the society of his time, he lived through its contradictions with pain, he suffered from the blindness of his compatriots, he fought for their redemption.

When we speak of zeal for the Lord, we can never separate it from a concern for the common good. The incarnation of the Son of God pushes us in this direction: if “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3:16), how can we, Christians, escape the commitment to take care of our brothers and sisters? The political, economic, social, ecological problems … they are our problems, they challenge us directly. According to his possibilities, each Christian works to find solutions and to start processes. Christians cannot mind their own business, Christians must not pretend nothing happened and turn around on the other side.

Like Elijah, each of us is called to be a “flaming furnace”: when we burn we also enlight.

We ask the Lord to give us Elijah’s courage so that we do not betray our Christians identity through a fearful conformity to the common style or through a fruitless complaining about things that are not right.

Also Jesus, in the Gospel, speaks about another Elijah, that is John the Baptist. We remember that he was defined “Voice of one crying out in the desert”. As it happened for the Voice so it will happen for the Word, that is Jesus. Jesus is the last word pronounced by the father for humanity. Many times men try to silence the Word because it is the only one capable of uncovering and highlighting so many mean bad attitudes, also made in the name of God.

Pope Francis, several times and especially in the last trip to Cyprus and Greece, denounced very clearly, through the Word of God, that peoples who claim to be Christians cannot continue to erect walls and barriers, cannot continue to be violent and corrupt. But who of the governors of the world is listening to the pope’s denunciation? The Word is still silenced, the volume of the Voice is still lowered.

The community of disciples is called to give strength and energy to the Word again, it is called to help every man and woman so that they can understand and welcome the liberating power of the Word.

I too, you too are called to be the voice of a Word that has taken flesh in our history.

We must not repeat like parrots what others have already said, but to say again, to give again, in an ever new and above all actual way, the Word of salvation that Jesus Christ has entrusted to us.

The Church cannot be a caste of people who are out of history. The Church is a people who makes themselves a voice in history to give voice, like the Father, to those who have no voice. The Church is a people that makes itself a voice of hope, of mercy, of liberation.

Too many still do “whatever they please” of the message of the Kingdom. Too many still silence the voices of those who propose the humanizing message of the Gospel.

So, my brothers and sister, let us welcome God who visits his people, give up our life so that the Word may be the source of life for humanity.