14th SUNDAY of Ordinary Time, year ’B’
“Leaving that district, he went to his home town, and his disciples accompanied him. With the coming of the Sabbath he began teaching into the synagogue, and most of them were astonished when they heard him. They said, ’Where did the man get all this? What is this wisdom that is granted him, and these miracles that are worked through him?’”
Jesus comes back to Nazareth; it is perhaps the first time he does so since the start of his Mission. Nazareth is the cradle of his childhood and youth. This is where he finds his family, cousins , and his neighbours and childhood friends. On the day of the Sabbath he goes into the Synagogue. His people welcome him but as soon as he begins to teach they changer their attitude. Surprised by the Wisdom of his Words coming out of his mouth, they learn about the miracles he accomplished in Galilee and their surprise turns into rejection, for they are ’deeply shocked because of Him.’ The fact of having been so familiar with Jesus for so many years gives them the impression of knowing Him very well. The people from Nazareth are in a state of astonishment and reject Jesus, who responds with another astonishment- at their lack of faith! ’No one is a Prophet in his own country!’ He is the beloved Son of the Father who created the whole world but the world didn’t welcome Him. The path of Jesus is easier to follow if we remain in God’s simplicity. ’I accept with all my heart for Christ, weaknesses , insults, constraints, persecutions and anguishing situations’, says the Apostle. Poverty is the only means to overcome pride, it is what the new evangelization demands.
“This is the carpenter, surely, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joset and Jude and Simon? His sisters too are they not here with us? And they would not accept him.”
Jesus turns to us in a very particular way, for when he comes back to our Nazareth, that is, to our own home, he leaves us free, he proposes, but doesn’t impose, his gifts. This attitude Jesus has puts us face to face with our own responsibility : that of running the risk of letting His Divine Grace escape us, without us welcoming it. Jesus might in fact pass by without me realising it, pass by quite simply because I might not be ready to welcome Him. Don’t let us reduce the coming of Jesus knocking at our doors with the visit of a simple carpenter. The carpenter from Nazareth is true God and true Man, our Unique Saviour, our unique Word of Truth who leads to True Life. Let us know how to recognise Him and don’t let us have Him pass us by. Grace prepares the path to reconciliation with God and in Christian families. The announce of the Good News by Jesus is done in poverty. Mary, mingling with the crowd is there to look at Him and to listen to Him. ’Is it not the carpenter, Mary’s son?’ they say about him! Jesus is the Son of God, this is His Secret of Love, he enters into public life through a path of humility and poverty.
“Jesus said to them, ’A prophet is despised only in his own country, among his own relations and in his own house. And he could work no miracle there, except that he cured a few sick people by laying his hands on them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.”
People around us can transmit the Gospel to us but very often it is hard to accept their testimony. When we listen to someone we don’t know, coming from ’elsewhere’ it would seem we are more attentive. It can happen that God speaks to us through people in around us at important times of our lives, we have to be ready to hear what they have to say to us in what is good and true! We shouldn’t take as a pretext the limitations and weak points of those who transmit the Gospel to us in order not to listen to what they have to say to us. It is the mystery of the poor who shine, the mystery of God who is Love who passes ’beneath" the pride of the wise and learned. It is in fact an everlasting truth that we are in
advance in our time and with the people around us thanks to the Holy Spirit who always accompanies us. In the heart of one’s own community those who bear witness can very often be the ones who encounter the most criticism and scorn.