Mt 17,10-13 – Saint Lucia, Virgin and Martyr – Memory
In today’s Gospel the disciples ask Jesus why the scribes say that Elijah must arrive before the coming of the Messiah. It is a question that arises from the need for clarity, from the desire for things to be exactly as we imagine them.
But Jesus responds by dismantling the idea of a God who enters history according to our patterns: Elijah has already come, but they didn’t recognize him. They rejected him, treated him as inconvenient, and they will do the same with the Son of Man. The tragedy is not that God does not speak; it’s that we often don’t recognize it. We want a God who illuminates everything, and instead He presents himself in discreet, humble wayssometimes even uncomfortable. It is here that the feast of Saint Lucia provides us with a further key to understanding this Gospel. His name means “light”, but his life was not one of easy lights. She was persecuted, misunderstood, rejected.
Yet he kept within himself a light stronger than all the darkness of his time: the light of faith, the one that does not depend on the eyes, but on the heart. Lucia reminds us that the true light it is not what allows us to see everything clearly, but what it allows us not to stop believing even when we no longer see anything. It is the light of loyalty, of hope, of the silent courage of those who remain standing even when everyone else runs away. Ultimately, it is the same light that Jesus’ contemporaries lack: they are blinded by their expectations and do not recognize the presence of God before them.
Maybe we too, like them, we wait for a God who arrives according to our criteria. But the Gospel and the lives of the saints tell us that God always comes, only that he often comes differently. And the believer’s task is not to lose the ability to recognize Him. Today is a good day to ask to see well with the heart (not with the belly!) which always has the ability to notice the essential invisible to the eyes.
Saturday 13 December 2025 – (Saint Lucia, Virgin and Martyr – Memory)
