FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN OT
B 2018
The
Scripture readings today invite us to experience God moments where we least
expect. In the Gospel today, when Jesus
returned to his home town of Nazareth to preach in the synagogue, the people
who knew him best responded with disbelief.
They said: “Is he not the
carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother James and Joses and Judas and
Simon?”
As far as
the hometown folks of Nazareth were concerned, Jesus was too local to be
important. As one sage puts it, “an
expert is someone who tells you everything you already know but comes from of
town and is carrying a brief case.”
Jesus should be home making tables like his dad, instead of preaching n
synagogues and working miracles and casting out demons.
A question
for our reflection is whether our preconceived notions of Jesus hinder us from
recognizing his presence in the circumstances of our life. The people of Jesus’ time might expect a word
of God from the high priest in the Jerusalem temple, but not from a carpenter,
not from Nazareth. What we believe in
the mystery of the Incarnation is that God is not an expert from heaven with a
briefcase. Rather God is to be found in
our neighbor, our friend, our hometown wisdom.
Who for you
is a most unlikely person to reveal God’s presence to you? For me on the Fourth of July, I began the
day celebrating the Eucharist at St Joseph’s and giving thanks to God for the
blessings we enjoy as a nation. The
Eucharist is a God moment on the Fourth of July or on any other day.
After
celebrating Mass, I went golfing with a good priest friend Father Al
Delmonte. At the golf shop, as I was
going to the first tee without any water, one of the golf shop workers ran up
to me providing me with a bottle of water saying it was much too hot not to
keep hydrated. He was right of course
but the God moment for me was his kindness in making sure I had this
water.
I pray that
I and all of us are able to recognize God moments in the kindness of people we
encounter each day. May you find the
presence of God in those you know and love so deeply? No one is too local or too ordinary to be a
bearer of God’s love for you. As I said,
in the mystery of the Incarnation, God is not an expert from heaven carrying a
briefcase. God is to be found in our
ordinary encounters with our neighbor, our friends, the incidental people we
meet each day who simply share with us hometown wisdom.
St. Paul in
the second Scripture provides us with another deep insight in experiencing God
where we least expect.
Paul
writes: “A thorn in the flesh was given
to me, an angel of Satan, to beat me, 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.’ Paul
then said, for the sake of Christ, ‘when I am weak, then I am strong.’”
Certainly
anyone who knows much about the life of St. Paul would not view him as a weak
man. This is the man who, through his
strong faith, puts his life in jeopardy constantly. He endured imprisonment and shipwrecks. Yet, he admits to having weaknesses.
There is
something very humble in admitting one’s weakness. Pope Francis reveals his humility in
beautiful ways. In his first description
of himself as our Pope, Francis humbly says:
“I am a sinner.” The message of
this scripture passage is that recognizing and admitting our shortcomings is
essential for us to have the strength Paul demonstrates.
The reason
St. Paul finds strength in his limitations is because he is aware that the Lord
will provide the power needed in the midst of those deficiencies. Paul’s life is God-centered. For the Apostle is true God-centeredness came
from his weakness, rather than his strength.
For in his weaknesses, he grew to trust in God’s grace for his life.
However,
note that Paul’s first prayer was that his thorn in the flesh would be removed
so that he might be a better preacher of the Gospel. So too, it is for us, we pray that we finally
overcome the sins we have been confessing all of our lives. We finally want to get it right and prove
that we have the will power to live the kind of life we can be very proud of.
Yet,
conversion happened for Paul happened when he switched gears. Instead of praying that his thorn of the
flesh would be removed, he boasted of his weakness. Paul then said: “For the sake of Christ, when I am weak, then
I am strong.”
How would
that work for us? Can you imagine
yourself boasting of your weakness? And
then say: “When I am weak, I am strong.”
What success
have you not achieved that is very important to you? What would you like to give your children but
are unable to? What illness or handicap
or addiction are you dealing with? What loss leaves an emptiness in your
life? What secret is too vulnerable for
you to share with others?
These I
suggest are your thorns in the flesh?
How can we embrace the virtue of humility and confess our shortcoming
and acknowledge our need for God’s grace in our life? This path, I would suggest, is your journey
of conversion.
The virtue
of humility does not come easily for any one of us. We would like to see ourselves at the top of
the ladder rather than the bottom of the ladder. The way we are wired is that we want to be
among the best and the brightest. Yet,
Jesus has given the example of the cross; he washed the feet of his disciples;
and he came not to be served but to serve.
These
Scriptures appropriately come to us during the ordinary time of the Church
year. The take home message for us
during the ordinary time of the Church year is to find God in all of life, and
to discover God’s presence in the ordinary moments of life, and to live our
spirituality by doing little things with great love.
Scr
Have a
Blessed Day.
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