The Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Dear
brothers and sisters,
Today, we find the Lord Jesus back
home, as it were, in Nazareth. After being tempted in the desert, he returned
to those who presumably heard his first words and watched him take his first
steps, who taught him how to skip a rock and how to cook a fish, who watched
him learn the skill of Saint Joseph, his foster father (cf. Luke 4:1-13). They
watched him advance in “wisdom and age before God and man” and saw that that
“the favor of God was upon him” (cf. Luke 2:52, 40). They watched him play and
they watched him pray, and now he returned to them to teach in their synagogues
and “to announce glad tidings to the poor” (cf. Luke 4:15 and 16; Luke 4:18;
cf. Isaiah 61:1).
In those days, Nazareth was just a
tiny hamlet, at best, consisting of a few large, extended families. The
childhood home of Mary was barely a stone’s throw away from that of Joseph.
Nazareth was such a small place that those who were not related to you by blood
or by marriage might as well have been because of how closely everyone surely
lived among each other.
At first, those who heard Jesus make
a rather staggering claim – “Today, this scripture passage is fulfilled in your
hearing” (Luke 4:21) – “were amazed at the gracious words that came from his
mouth” (Luke 4:22). Who can blame them? It was as if the great prayer of the
Psalmist was at last being answered in their presence and through one of their
own: “O my God, rescue me from the hand of the wicked” (Psalm 71:4)! Did they
make these words of the same Psalmist their own, as well: “My mouth shall
declare your justice, day by day your salvation” (Psalm 71:15)? It might have
seemed as if the Lord were making of Nazareth “a fortified city, a pillar of
iron, a wall of brass,” against which their enemies would not prevail (Jeremiah1:18; cf. Jeremiah 1:19).
How is it, then, that those who
first “spoke highly of him” so quickly moved “to hurl him down headlong” over
the cliff of Nazareth (Luke 4:22, 29)? What caused their hearts to change so
drastically in so little time? Why had Jesus offended them so deeply?
The words he said to them today are words
that we might find a bit confusing, but they – with their love and knowledge of
the Old Testament – would have immediately recognized his meaning; they would
have known that he named them unfaithful and acknowledged them as sinners. He
said nothing that was false, but they did not want to hear the truth. His own
family wanted to kill him because he pointed out their sin, because he called
them to repentance; they wanted to kill him because his judgment – given in love
– was just and because he called them to a life of sincere love. Are we all
that different today?
How many people today speak highly of the
Lord Jesus when they hear him say, “Stop judging, that you may not be judged,”
but seek to cast him out of their lives when they hear him say, “whoever denies
me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father” (Matthew 7:1; 10:33)? How
many people today are amazed at his gracious words when he says, “Let the
children come to me,” but obstinately close their ears when he says, “everyone
who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and the one who
marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” (Matthew 19:14;
Luke 16:18)? These are just two examples of his words that people commonly reject
today, all the while claiming to love him. Their love, though, is false,
because their supposed love does not rejoice with the truth but seeks instead
to evade it (cf. I Corinthians 13:6).
Because Jesus is “the way and the truth
and the life,” he cannot deceive us and he cannot be deceived by us; he cannot lie
to us or tell us a falsehood (John 14:6). We know that Jesus loves us because
everything he said and everything he did, he did for our good, for our
salvation. If we consider all of the things that Saint Paul says about love
today, we see that love is not a sentiment or an emotion; these come and go and
we do not always have control over them. Rather, the Apostle tells us what love
does and what love does not do. Love, then, is not an emotion, but a choice; it
is a desire for the good of the one we love, accompanied by actions and choices
to attain that good, even at our own expense. Jesus paid the ultimate expense
to bring about our good: he willingly gave his life for us on the Cross so that
our sins might be forgiven. He allowed his heart to be pierced for us so that he
– and not ourselves – might be a rock of refuge for us, a stronghold to give us
safety from the storms of life and the enticements of the devil and his
servants(cf. Psalm 71:3).
If we wish to love Jesus and to love our
neighbor – if we wish to attain salvation – we must drink anew from the source
of love: we must drink daily from the water that flows from the pierced side of
Christ (cf. John 19:34). This is why Saint Marianne Cope tells us to “creep
into the heart of Jesus.”
She tells us to creep because entering
into the doorway of his heart is not easy because the door to his heart is
narrow and he tells us that “many … will attempt to enter but will not be
strong enough” (Luke 13:24). They will not be strong enough because they will
attempt to enter the door to his heart through their own strength, claiming the
power to declare right and wrong for themselves in opposition to what he says, all
the while living in unconfessed – and therefore unforgiven – sin. But those who
listen to Jesus point out their sins to them - who listen to his true judgment
and do not reject it, but confess their sins - these will have the strength to
enter into his loving and merciful heart because they will walk in his own strength.
These – the honest and the humble – are those to whom the Lord will always
incline his ear; he will rescue them and deliver them because they strive
eagerly after the greatest spiritual gifts, because they strive after love (cf.
Psalm 71:2; I Corinthians 12:31).
Already, even now, the Lord Jesus stands
at the door of our hearts, knocking on them and asking our permission to enter (cf.
Revelation 3:20). Just as he did not force himself into the hearts of those at
Nazareth, neither will he force his way into our hearts today. If we
acknowledge his voice of truth and seek to live according to it, he will enter
into our hearts; if not, he will pass through our midst to knock on other
hearts (cf. Luke 4:30).
Let us not refuse him entry! Let us not
ignore the truth of his words, hard as they might be! Let us open the doors of our
hearts to him, that our hearts might be filled with the gladness of his tidings
and that his freedom might be ours. That our hearts and his heart may be one. Amen.
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