Dear People of God, it behoves us to take special notice of
the following excerpts from our first two readings today before going on to
study today’s Gospel:
You shall say to them: ‘Thus says
the Lord God!’ And whether they heed or
resist – for they are a rebellious house – they shall know that a prophet has
been among them.
‘Thus says the Lord’: the ultimate authority of God, demanding the prophet’s
obedience in speaking to His people, and the people’s obedient hearing for the
prophet’s words.
In our Gospel reading we heard how Jesus went with His
disciples to His home town of Nazareth and was amazed at the lack of faith He
discovered there: His fellows in the synagogue – that is, the religious, the
devout, citizens of Nazareth -- were unwilling to accept either His teaching --
which they understood well enough to recognize its wisdom -- or His miracles,
which they had seen for themselves, or concerning which they had received
unimpeachable evidence from others who had been witnesses. And this unwillingness to seriously accept
and appreciate Himself, His teaching and His miracles before fully developing
into a total rejection of Him, His words and works, was originally motivated by
the simple fact that a prominent ‘clique’ thought they knew Him and His family;
for He had not only been brought up in their midst but had actually been taught
in their synagogue. What would
have become of Him if they had not been at hand to help and guide Him?
Why did Jesus find that amazing? After all, He had been living among these
people from childhood and must have experienced many of their personal
idiosyncrasies through daily contact with them; moreover, He most certainly was
endowed with enough wisdom to have gained a truly profound appreciation of
human nature in general. Nevertheless,
we are told that He did, indeed, marvel at their unbelief; and time seems only to
have deepened that amazement and sorrow, for you will remember that, later on, the
experiences of His public ministry led Him to say:
When the Son of Man comes, will
He really find faith on the earth? (Luke
18:8)
In the Gospels, we are told that Jesus only marvelled on
two occasions: one, as you have just heard, at the unbelief of His home-townspeople;
and secondly at the faith of the Roman centurion whose servant He cured:
When Jesus heard this, He marvelled
and said to those who followed Him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel
have I found such faith. (Matthew
8:10)
This fact that Jesus is only said to have ‘marvelled’ on these two occasions involving
faith or lack of it, seems to indicate that, of all human activities and
attitudes, it is faith which is the most personal, and also the most significant
and ultimately wonderful act of which a human being is capable. And it is here that we should recall those
words of St. Paul:
The Lord said to me, ‘My grace is
sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in (your) weakness.’
Why is faith so extraordinary? Because it is a personal G/gift from God the
Father; because it is the G/gift on which God’s plan for the redemption and exaltation
of humankind depends. For although human eyes enabled men and women to see
the wonders that Jesus did, and by their ears they could have heard the words
of wisdom that came from His lips, but the transcendent reality at work in and behind
those words and deeds could only be recognized and embraced by the humble and
loving acceptance of the gift of faith from God’s Gift which is His own Most
Holy Spirit:
The glory You have given Me I have given to them,
that they may be one, even as We are One. (John
17:22)
I have manifested Your name to
the people whom You gave Me out of the world. Yours they were, and You gave
them to Me, and they have kept Your word.
Now they have known that everything that You have given Me is from
You. For I have given to them the
words that You gave Me; and they have received them, and have come to know in truth that I came from You; and
they have believed that You sent Me. (John 17:6-9)
Jesus’ later questioning whether the Son of Man would find
faith on earth when He returns, becomes, therefore, more understandable when we
consider that faith is truly a most wonderful quality in a human being because
it is totally supernatural – a gift, God-given, to raise a weak and sinful
creature to the level of a child of God – and, being so sublime, faith can only
be rightly received with a corresponding humility. Did not Our Blessed Lady herself declare:
My soul magnifies the Lord and my
spirit rejoices in God my Saviour; for He has looked on the humble estate of
His servant.
Now, where faith is weak, and when -- perhaps under extreme
pressure -- it might seem non-existent, Jesus, indeed, is disappointed and hurt;
but He is never said to have marvelled at that: after all, He knows our human
weakness.
Why, therefore, was Jesus so amazed at lack of faith in those
who seemed religious and even devout in Nazareth, why, indeed, did He marvel their
unbelief when He could be so understanding of native human weakness?
Here we encounter something of the mystery of Jesus,
something of the wonder of His Person and the beauty of His character.
He came from the Father and had lived the majority of His
life on earth in the home of Mary and Joseph where He had been seen to be daily
“growing in favour with God and men”.
You will remember that after having seriously prepared for His long-anticipated
reception to manhood-before-God as a young Jew, He had been so fascinated with the
subsequent opportunity to talk deeply with the rabbis in the Temple – men learned
in the Scriptures and the things of God -- that He forgot all about returning
home in the caravan with Mary and Joseph.
And now here, as a fully mature man and an increasingly celebrated ‘rabbi’
back in His home-town synagogue at Nazareth, He likewise rejoiced that He might
be able to speak again of the things of His Father with those in whose midst He
had grown up, with those He so intimately knew and loved despite their faults
and failings, those who were members of God’s Chosen People to whom He had been
sent:
It is written …, 'And they will
all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes
to Me. (John 6:45)
However, He was, indeed, amazed to discover how little reverence
and love they had for His-and-their heavenly Father and how little they understood
of the spiritual endowment they had received through Moses and the Prophets. He had spoken of what He had learned from His
Father, their God; He had done the works His Father had given Him to do for
their enlightenment; and, to the fact that they had both heard and seen what He
had said and done, their very own words testified:
What is the wisdom given to Him? How are such mighty works done by His hands?
And yet, they did not respond to His Father, nor would they
recognize Himself!
Their great difficulty, was that they were in no way prepared
to accept that one who had grown up apparently like any other child in their
midst could be fundamentally any better than themselves. Failure through fear as experienced by His
disciples during the storm on the Sea of Galilee was human; refusal from pride as
shown by His townspeople in Nazareth was devilish! Who, indeed, did He think He was?
Jesus said to them, "A
prophet is not without honour except in his home town and among his relatives and
in his own household." So, He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands
on a few sick people and healed them. And
He marvelled because of their unbelief.
Jesus marvelled because they refused to marvel at
God’s goodness shown to One they considered to be like themselves. The
Nazarenes were very proud. They would,
indeed, accept one more learned than themselves (some acknowledged and
scholarly rabbi perhaps), that one stronger (some revolutionary leader perhaps),
but not one better than themselves
before God: better in His knowledge of, response to, and love for, the God Who
they had come to consider as theirs.
The fact is that they were no longer God’s People because
they had come to consider Him as their god, just as the pagans all
around each had their god, who was no true god. The denizens of Nazareth, having
come to think that Israel’s ancient Lord was in fact their own Jewish god, found something deeply offensive in
this Man before them demanding that they truly REPENT and learn anew to LOVE
the God Who had brought their fathers out of Egypt to this Promised Land. THIS was the stumbling block over which they
fell and condemned themselves: Israel’s God was their god, and this ‘fellow’ had been taught at their synagogue, long before He became
famous elsewhere.
St. Paul, on the contrary, told us how he had learnt ultimate
humility from God:
A thorn in the flesh was given to
me, an angel of Satan, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I begged the Lord about this,
that it might leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for
power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I am content with weaknesses,
insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for
when I am weak, then I am strong.
Faith, dear People of God, is the glory of a human
being. It is a sublime gift of God, as the
Gospel tells us, but it is something that can only be received with humility; for,
through faith, the very power of God is at our disposal, and we must only use
it for His glory, never for our own. Being
born of humility, faith can only be cherished by the constant practice of
simplicity and trust in God, for the worries and false solicitudes of the world
would choke it, as Jesus lovingly warns us (Luke 12:27-33):
Seek but the kingdom of God, and all these
things shall be added to you.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, you who have all been
personally chosen by the Father to be disciples of Jesus and witnesses to the
world: avoid worries and solicitude
which sap away the strength of your faith; above all, never indulge doubt which
can destroy faith. Cardinal Newman used
to say that a hundred difficulties do not make one doubt. Do you think, do you fear, that your faith is
still weak? Then humble yourself gladly
before God with St. Paul; and never forget what St. John would tell you also, namely,
that you can grow in faith by the communion you have, daily, with God. Would you aspire, finally, to the crown of
faith? Then give yourself in commitment
-- sincere and total -- to God in prayer, to Jesus in the Eucharist, and to the
Gospel proclaimed by Mother Church, in all life’s circumstances, big and small;
such faith will earn you the eternal reward and crown implied in the words:
Go in peace, your faith has saved you.
