First Reading: Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19
And the word of the Lord came to
me, saying: Before I formed you in the bowels of your mother, I knew you: and
before you came forth out of the womb, I sanctified you, and made you a prophet
unto the nations.
You therefore gird up your loins,
and arise, and speak to them all that I command you. Be not afraid at their
presence: for I will make you not to fear their countenance. For behold I have
made you this day a fortified city, and a pillar of iron, and a wall of brass,
over all the land, to the kings of Juda, to the princes thereof, and to the
priests, and to the people of the land. And they shall fight against them, and
shall not prevail: for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you.
Second Reading: First Corinthians 12:31-13:13
But be zealous for the better gifts. And I show unto you yet
a more excellent way.
If I speak with the tongues of men
and of angels, and have not charity, I have become as sounding brass, or a
tinkling cymbal. 2 And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries
and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove
mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 3 And if I should distribute all
my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and
have not charity, it profits me nothing.
Charity is patient, is kind:
charity envies not, deals not perversely, is not puffed up, 5 is not ambitious,
seeks not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinks no evil: 6 Rejoices not in
iniquity, but rejoices with the truth: 7 Bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
Charity never falls away: whether
prophecies shall be made void or tongues shall cease or knowledge shall be
destroyed. For we know in part: and we prophesy in part. But when that which is
perfect has come, that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child,
I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I
became a man, I put away the things of a child. 12 We see now through a glass
in a dark manner: but then face to face. Now I know in part: but then I shall
know even as I am known. And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these
three: but the greatest of these is charity.
Gospel: Luke 4: 21-30
And he began to say to them: This day is fulfilled this
scripture in your ears. 22 And all gave testimony to him. And they wondered at
the words of grace that proceeded from his mouth. And they said: Is not this
the son of Joseph?
And
he said to them: Doubtless you will say to me this similitude: Physician, heal
yourself. As great things as we have heard done in Capharnaum, do also here in
your own country.
And he said: Amen I say to you that
no prophet is accepted in his own country. In truth I say to You, there were
many widows in the days of Elias in Israel, when heaven was shut up three years
and six months, when there was a great famine throughout all the earth. And to
none of them was Elias sent, but to Sarepta of Sidon, to a widow woman. And
there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet: and none
of them was cleansed but Naaman the Syrian.
And all they in the synagogue,
hearing these things, were filled with anger. 29 And they rose up and thrust
him out of the city: and they brought him to the brow of the hill whereon their
city was built, that they might cast him down headlong. 30 But he passing
through the midst of them, went his way.
Reflections:
Another
week where the epistle overshadows the Gospel somewhat. I mean, let’s face it;
Paul’s dissertation on Love is a lot more central to the Christian faith than
the near-riot caused by Jesus’ homily. And yet, I’m going to pass over Paul for
now and talk about the Gospel.
We
pick up with Jesus immediately after last week (as in, literally on the very
next verse), where He gives a very short explanation of the Scripture Reading
by simply identifying it with Himself. Imagine the priest getting up one
Sunday, reading a prophecy about the coming Messiah, saying “it’s me,” and
sitting down again. It’s really not much of a surprise that people reacted
badly.
There’s
an interesting turn of phrase at the start of this passage: it doesn’t say “And
He said to them” but “And He began to say
to them.” This, I think, has two meanings: one, Jesus intended to say more on
the subject, but was rudely interrupted by the crowd talking about him. Two,
this is only the beginning of Christ’s revelation; therefore, He has only begun
to identify Himself to the people, a process that will consume the next three
years…or, depending on how you understand ‘them,’ the rest of history.
But
what bothers the people, and continues to, is the fact that Jesus is so very
ordinary (they know Him; they’ve watched Him grow up), and what He is saying is
so very…not. What we have here is the exact same thing that we run into so
often today. It’s the fact that it’s really very hard to believe in the
miraculous. And I don’t just mean for atheists or non-believers (or even for
those rather sad types who claim to be Christian, but try to explain away all
the miracles). Even for faithful, believing Catholics it can be quite a
challenge to really accept the miraculous. Or at least, there’s a kind of
unspoken assumption that miracles were all very well and good in Jesus’ day, or in the Middle Ages, or
something, but here and now, in our very stable, very sensible world, they just
don’t happen, do they? (I’ll pass on the charming assumption that our world is
either stable or sensible, since I don’t want to be here all day).
What this passage reminds us of is that
Jesus’ world was just as (*snort*) stable and sensible as ours; his neighbors
were farmers, carpenters, tent-makers, and millers; highly practical people who
worked with their hands and knew exactly how the natural world worked. And,
just like us, they probably had the vague notion that the time of miracles was
over; that miracles were somehow less miraculous in good-old Jeremiah’s day.
But no; miracles are shocking whenever they happen.
It’s
so easy to picture God working in a kind of fantasy world; a dream-like state
where the normal rules and everyday concerns don’t apply. For instance, the
people of Nazareth apparently had some notion that the Messiah would come
trailing clouds of glory out of the sky, or something; that He would somehow be
‘other’ than their normal day-to-day lives.
But,
the truth is, He was one of their neighbors; the guy who had probably worked on
their houses or built their furniture. And seeing Him standing there being so very
ordinary, so very everyday, it’s no wonder they couldn’t believe Him.
We
don’t expect the Divine, or the miraculous, or the fantastic to occur in the
midst of ordinary life. We expect that a miracle will somehow happen differently than everything else; so
when it just matter-of-factly happens, we’re all the more dumbfounded.
To get an idea what I mean, picture
seeing St. Thomas Aquinas levitating. I imagine that you are, consciously or
not, picturing bright light, music, and other accompaniments to signal how
miraculous the event was. But the truth of the matter is that seeing St. Thomas
fly was probably not a whole lot different than seeing him kneel; no lights, no
music, just a slight change in position. In short, it simply happens the same
way anything else does, the only difference being that it ordinarily shouldn’t.
What’s my point in all this? Simply
that we shouldn’t be too proud or too skeptical to see the divine at work in
our daily lives. If we are Christians, then we must believe that God is
intimately involved in everything that happens in the world. This, of course,
gives us hard questions when evil arises, but we’ll leave those for now in
favor of this; the very ordinariness of our daily lives conceals God, just as
the very ordinariness of Jesus did.
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