February 3^rd 2013. FOURTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Gospel: Luke 4:21-30

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

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Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

Gospel:                                Luke 4: 21-30
Jesus he began to speak in the synagogue, 'This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen'. And he won the approval of all, and they were astonished by the gracious words that came from his lips.

They said, 'This is Joseph's son, surely?' But he replied, 'No doubt you will quote me the saying, "Physician, heal yourself" and tell me, "We have heard all that happened in Capernaum, do the same here in your own countryside"'.  And he went on, 'I tell you solemnly, no prophet is ever accepted in his own country.

'There were many widows in Israel, I can assure you, in Elijah's day, when heaven remained shut for three years and six months and a great famine raged throughout the land, but Elijah was not sent to any one of these: he was sent to a widow at Zarephath, a Sidonian town. And in the prophet Elisha's time there were many lepers in Israel, but none of these was cured, except the Syrian, Naaman.'

When they heard this everyone in the synagogue was enraged. They sprang to their feet and hustled him out of the town; and they took him up to the brow of the hill their town was built on, intending to throw him down the cliff, but he slipped through the crowd and walked away.

 The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

The public ministry of Jesus begins with a confrontation between the true identity of Jesus and the parochial identity he has in the eyes of his fellow Nazarenes. The same is true for all of us. The Lord wants us to shed our old identities and embark on a journey to discover the wonderful identity that we have in God’s eyes. We are far more than our earthly origins, our family histories and our childhood experiences! But how are we to discover this new and beautiful identity that God has for each of us? The Lord conserves our true identity in the secrecy of his heart, and only reveals it to us when we begin to walk in his ways. Do you wish to discover your true identity, the true meaning of your life? God will begin revealing it to you when you begin to follow him!

The public ministry of Jesus begins with controversy about his identity

In this scene, we are presented with the first event in the public life of Jesus as recounted by the Gospel of Luke. It involves a confrontation that is very much provoked by Jesus himself. As we saw in last Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus went to Nazareth, took the scroll and read the text, and then declared that the Scriptures were being fulfilled in that very moment. There was a severe reaction to his words. “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?” they said. We who are reading the Gospel are well aware that Jesus in NOT the son of Joseph, since Luke gives a detailed account of how Jesus is generated by God from the virginal womb of Mary. Why does the public ministry of Jesus begin with confrontation and controversy about the real identity of Jesus?

Radical following of the Lord requires changing our identity and rejection of the identity that we had previously

At the beginning of a new direction in life, there is always confrontation of this sort. John’s Gospel speaks of the conflict between that which is born of the flesh and that which is born of the spirit. It is not possible to follow God unless we are reborn, unless we move away from what we were and begin the journey of discovering our true identity. In the cases of some of the Apostles, Peter in particular, the encounter with Jesus leads to a change of name, a new identity, a new birth. In Jesus’ own case, the severance of links with his hometown represents a new beginning and direction in life. The story of salvation begins with Abraham, the man who had to leave his paternal home. This is a theme that one finds repeatedly in the Scriptures: the Lord wishes to do something new with us, something that does not depend on who we are, or on the things that we have done previously.

God conserves our true identity in secret, and only reveals it to us when we begin to walk in his ways

The conflict between Jesus and the people of Nazareth in the Gospel is dramatic, and Jesus says some harsh words about how Elijah and Elisha were sent to those who were not born in Israel. The fundamental lesson of the passage is that we must experience some sort of rupture in our lives if we are to enter into the things of God, a rupture with the things that spring from the flesh. This fact is reinforced when we consider that the Second Reading on Sunday is nothing less than St Paul’s great Hymn to Charity which speaks of the extraordinary characteristics of the love that has its origin in God. This is not to negate the flesh, or to deny the fact that we are merely creatures. But there is more to us than our earthly origins. On the 8^th of December, the Holy Father said that the human being can only be understood in the light of grace. My true identity can only be understood in the context of the free gift of love that God bears for me. Jesus breaks completely with the parochial identity that he has in the eyes of the Nazarenes. Just as Jesus unveils his secret identity before the Nazarenes, so too we must discover our secret identity, an identity that is determined by our relationship with God. Our identity is conserved by God and is not revealed until the moment that we begin to walk in his ways

Each of us has a beautiful identity that completely exceeds what other people know about us. God reveals that identity to us as we journey with him

The works of God in us, the true exercise of charity in us, are manifested only when we are reborn in God, and when we break with the identity that we have had since our infancy. The people of Nazareth react to Jesus’ assumption of a new identity, and they say, “We know exactly who you are! You were born here and we know your family!” But Jesus was not born there, and he is not the person that they think he is. In the same way, there is a truth about each one of us that is greater than people realize. There is a beautiful, luminous truth about all of us that is conserved in God, and that God will reveal to us. When God reveals it to us, we must assume that new identity and be changed. If we think of the lives of the saints, St Francis of Assisi for example, many of them left their paternal house and became something that was completely different and even unacceptable to the expectations of their fellow villagers. We too must cease to be obedient to the alliances established by this world. We must cease to be what other people expect and become what we truly are. Each one of us is on a journey of self-discovery in which God reveals our identity to us. It is only in the light of his grace that we begin to understand ourselves.

There is nothing more wonderful than to discover who we are in God’s eyes

A marriage will last only if the spouses leave their families, leave their previous identities, and enter into the graces of the sacrament. A priest is fully himself only if he is completely dedicated to God and has utterly abandoned the identity he had before receiving his vocation. Every Christian friendship is truly itself only if it has moved to a plane where conventional human expectations and role are abandoned. We cannot remain all of our lives as we were when we were children. People may continue to think that I am “the child of Joseph” but the truth is that I am something else of a completely unexpected sort. There is nothing more wonderful than to discover who we are in God’s eyes. There is nothing more wonderful than to be free of the invisible nets and cords that bind us, and to become new creatures altogether.