When I am strong, I am strong.

  

FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN OT B 2024

 

On this Fourth of July weekend, perhaps you have enjoyed a family cookout, watch some fireworks, perhaps a round of golf, reflected in gratitude on the blessings we enjoy as a nation.

I commend you for making this celebration of the Eucharist a spiritual moment in your holiday weekend.

 

The Scripture readings today invite us to experience God moments where we least expect.

 

St. Paul in the second Scripture provides us with a 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 humiliating 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 Paul, his true God-centeredness came from his weakness, rather than his strength.  For in his weakness, 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 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 anyone of us and certainly not us as a nation.  We would like to see ourselves at the top of the ladder 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 us the example of the cross; he washed the feet of his disciples; and he came not to be served but to serve.

 

 In the Gospel today, when Jesus returned to his hometown 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?”

By way of parenthesis, it was customary in the time of the evangelist to refer to close relatives as brothers and sisters.

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 briefcase.”  Jesus should be home making tables like his dad, instead of preaching in 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 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?

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.

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 and the unexpected moments of the day.

 

May God give you peace.