Ordinary Time, Odd Year, Week No.

5, Monday
Today we begin with the first book of the bible, the book of Genesis. Last week we listened to
the letter to the Hebrews.
I think we can see these readings as a new beginning of our life. We don't have to be like the
distracted men: "eating flies" we say in Mexico. Enter mass and listen to this reading. It's not
just listening or being at mass just because and that's it. Everything has its reason for being.
We ought to have some motivation and knowing that these motivations are not simply
wanting to know more and that's it, or being at mass just because. The mass should be the
door to enjoy more what God has to offer to us.
Let's look at today´s first reading and I want to look at it as a kind of refreshing wind. When we
turn our mind to the beginning of the universe and ourselves in the view of faith. Today's
world has become so tangled, so complex, so ambiguous, it is so beautiful to return the
simplicity of this poetry and these words.
Today it is so difficult to say what is good and what is bad in itself, because all things are
ambiguous. Money, for example: it is a good and sometimes it is necessary, but it has come
sometimes it is greed and it is idolatry. With money we can do great good works, people are
also killed for money. Money is no longer simple, it is complex. Everything in human history
(not in nature) as the centuries go by becomes more and more ambiguous. Even things that
should be so clean, so lucid: such as science (the very knowledge of the works of God). This
(Money, Science, etc.) should only be a reason for praise and gratitude, but man has not made
it ambiguous, he has corrupted it. Through science it can also be used to kill, to oppress, to
exploit, it can become an idol that separates us from God.
Instead, the refrain that is repeated at the beginning of the Bible is: "that God saw what he
had made and it was good", "God saw that the light was good", "God saw that it was good
when he made the continents" and then when he made the plants, the herbs, the trees; "God
saw that he was good", everything was good.
This reading of Genesis among many virtualities that it has, has this one; that allows us to
return as to God's original desire, as to God's original plan, as to the simplicity of what God
created: so that it would be good as he himself is good.
It would be good if, in the light of this reading, we turned our gaze to our own existence and
we could feel that, as well as under all the fallen leaves of the world, in the background follows
this word: “God saw that it was good”. In the same way, deep down, our hearts have become
entangled, complex, arduous, and ambiguous because of our history of our sin. Also in the
bottom of our hearts, this word of “and he saw that it was good” still persists. We can also say
(put 3 names of Vietnamese brothers) that he was good.
Deep down in the heart of every man there is still a desire for God, no matter how many
sheets you have covered yourself with to hide your sin. This desire, this free and gratuitous
love, perceiving this love that always accompanies us is the immortal relevance of this text.
Feeling that also in the bottom of our hearts, God sees us and sees us good.
That God always sees us as good does not mean that God is blind to all the evil that others
have thrown at us and that we have thrown at ourselves. He means that as long as we walk on
this earth; That original plan of God continues to be proclaimed, it continues to proclaim that
there is an original goodness of God. That the love of God is the ultimate explanation of our
life.
This "look" of God towards us will end when we meet Him, with that original love and when
we meet Him, all life from bottom to top acquires meaning, acquires light, acquires order. If
unfortunately, hopefully and it doesn't happen to any of us, we don't connect, we don't unite
with that original love first, then we will be lost to ourselves for all eternity, we call this: hell,
from which it frees us God.
Let us therefore feel the freshness of God's original design to feel his love. Being grateful
precisely that without having to make us, he made us. We have to reconcile ourselves with the
depths of our being that is found in wanting God himself.