GOSPEL 4:21-30
Translated from a homily by Don Fabio
Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio
Don Fabio’s
reflection follows the Gospel reading . . .
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GOSPEL Luke 4:21-30
Jesus began speaking in the synagogue, saying:
"Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing."
And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They also asked, "Isn't this the son of Joseph?"
He said to them, "Surely you will quote me this proverb,
'Physician, cure yourself,' and say,
'Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.'"
And he said, "Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.
Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah
when the sky was closed for three and a half years
and a severe famine spread over the entire land.
It was to none of these that Elijah was sent,
but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.
Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet;
yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian."
When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury.
They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill
on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong.
But Jesus passed through the midst of them and went away.
"Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing."
And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They also asked, "Isn't this the son of Joseph?"
He said to them, "Surely you will quote me this proverb,
'Physician, cure yourself,' and say,
'Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.'"
And he said, "Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.
Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah
when the sky was closed for three and a half years
and a severe famine spread over the entire land.
It was to none of these that Elijah was sent,
but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.
Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet;
yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian."
When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury.
They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill
on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong.
But Jesus passed through the midst of them and went away.
The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord
Jesus Christ
Kieran’s summary . . . In Sunday’s Gospel we read how Jesus’
words disturbed the people of Nazareth. A true
prophet is not an astrologer who does your horoscope and tells you what you
want to hear. God’s
ways are not our ways, his thoughts are not our thoughts. Whenever the Lord
speaks to me, he must tell me something different to what I am thinking myself.
Otherwise it is not God who is speaking to me! I cannot go to the liturgy and
expect the word of God to leave me unmoved! True joy and true consolation
require being shaken out of my own closed mentality to return to the Lord. How
often we turn the word of God into something sugary and domesticated. Or else
we turn it into an abstraction to stimulate our intelligence. But the word of
God is a place where the Lord is actively caring for us and seeking to
transform us. When we pray, or go into the liturgy or contemplate the word of
God, it is essential that we do so ready to be challenged, ready to allow God
to visit us and redeem us. When we hear the word of God, it is as if we are on the banks of the Red Sea, waiting to see if the waters will open or if our enemies will reach us. We must contemplate the word in the context of the real drama of our own lives.
The
true prophet is not an astrologer who does your horoscope. The task of the
prophet is to challenge and denounce.
On this fourth Sunday in ordinary time, we begin by
listening to the call of the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah was called from before
his mother’s womb to be “prophet of the nations”. What does it mean to be a
prophet? It mean to arise and recount everything that the Lord reveals to him.
And do not be afraid of them, says the Lord, or I will give you something to be
afraid of! You must remain on my side and fear me more than them. “I
this day
make you a fortified city, a pillar of iron, a wall of brass”. Why does the reading have this warlike character? Because this is the nature of a true prophet. A prophet is not someone who comes to tell your horoscope so that you can know how things are going to go for you, the encounters that you will have etc.. True prophecy is not of this trivial sort! In the Gospel we see what happens to Jesus after he opens his public ministry in the Gospel of Luke. At the synagogue of Nazareth he proclaims that the prophecy of Isaiah has been fulfilled in him. The people begin to say, “But this is the son of Joseph. Who does he think he is?” They are disturbed by his assertion. The expression, “all spoke highly of him”, is not translated well. The original Greek refers to someone who makes a negative testimony against someone else. Jesus is being rejected here, there is no doubt about it. Nazareth is a strange place. Here we find the faith of Mary, but here also we find incredulity. All of the Gospels assert that Jesus was not believed in Nazareth. But why did he not find faith? Because what he was saying was not according to their taste. Jesus gives examples of people who do believe, often people who are strangers, like Naaman the Syrian and the widow of Zarephath, or those who do not have great knowledge. The whole scene ends in chaos with the crowd trying to kill Jesus. What has happened here to make things go so badly? What has happened is that Jesus had spoken as a prophet. Jeremiah too faced attempts on his life. In the end Jesus will be killed, precisely for this prophecy. But what is a prophet expected to say? Is he expected to say nice things, to persuade gently? No, by nature a prophet must destabilize, always and everywhere.
make you a fortified city, a pillar of iron, a wall of brass”. Why does the reading have this warlike character? Because this is the nature of a true prophet. A prophet is not someone who comes to tell your horoscope so that you can know how things are going to go for you, the encounters that you will have etc.. True prophecy is not of this trivial sort! In the Gospel we see what happens to Jesus after he opens his public ministry in the Gospel of Luke. At the synagogue of Nazareth he proclaims that the prophecy of Isaiah has been fulfilled in him. The people begin to say, “But this is the son of Joseph. Who does he think he is?” They are disturbed by his assertion. The expression, “all spoke highly of him”, is not translated well. The original Greek refers to someone who makes a negative testimony against someone else. Jesus is being rejected here, there is no doubt about it. Nazareth is a strange place. Here we find the faith of Mary, but here also we find incredulity. All of the Gospels assert that Jesus was not believed in Nazareth. But why did he not find faith? Because what he was saying was not according to their taste. Jesus gives examples of people who do believe, often people who are strangers, like Naaman the Syrian and the widow of Zarephath, or those who do not have great knowledge. The whole scene ends in chaos with the crowd trying to kill Jesus. What has happened here to make things go so badly? What has happened is that Jesus had spoken as a prophet. Jeremiah too faced attempts on his life. In the end Jesus will be killed, precisely for this prophecy. But what is a prophet expected to say? Is he expected to say nice things, to persuade gently? No, by nature a prophet must destabilize, always and everywhere.
God’s ways are not our ways. Whenever the Lord speaks
to me, he must tell me something different to what I am thinking myself
As the Lord says through
the prophet Isaiah, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your
ways”; thus, whenever God speaks to me, he must tell me something different to
what I am thinking myself. Otherwise it is not God who is speaking to me. I am
talking to myself. The prophet must always shake me up in a good sense, and
either free me or show me the way out of my closed mentality. I cannot listen
to God and then try to place him in the little box of my own making. I cannot go
to Mass and expect the word of God to leave me unmoved. Too often we have
transformed the word of God into something sugary, into something harmless and
domesticated. That which looks like a kitten is in reality a tiger. That which
might appear to comfort us in reality should scratch us. Do we really think we
can be placed in front of the word of God and not be challenged? That would
mean that the Lord had stopped working on us, had stopped caring about us. The
word of God must always put me in
difficulty if it is to help me make progress.
True joy and true consolation require being shaken
out of my own closed mentality and returning to the Lord
And often the difficulty
the word of God causes me will actually become my true consolation. Sometimes
it takes a shock to make me return to myself. True joy requires that I abandon
my own mentality. In the same Gospel of Luke, the risen Jesus appears to the
disciples of Emmaus and says “Oh foolish and slow to believe!” In order to come
to the knowledge of the beautiful truth, these disciples must cease thinking
what they were thinking. Whenever a person is to be corrected or consoled, he
must come out of his own way of thinking. For this reason, the word of God must
always destabilize us. It is very important that we go into the liturgy ready
to be challenged. The word cannot do other than to seek out that within us that
needs to be changed, to lead us out of slavery. The Lord always wishes to say
things to us that are great and beautiful, not inconsequential things. He does
not place himself in front of us to say things that are tame and domesticated.
When we contemplate the word of God, it must always
be in the context of the dramatic reality of our own lives, and not as a pure
abstraction
In prayer, the challenge is to stop believing that
we have already understood or assimilated something that the Lord wishes to
tell us. This is never the case. An ancient Hebrew sage writes that every time
we are in front of the word of God, it is as if we are on the banks of the Red
Sea. Will the sea open, or will my enemies arrive beforehand? When we are contemplating
the word of God, we must always take into account the dramatic aspect of our
lives, the areas in which we need to be visited by God and redeemed. The word
of God is not a place where we receive information or abstractions that merely stimulate
our intelligence. This would be to turn the word of God into something vain.
How often we have over-conceptualised the word of God! We do not present is as
the work of God in progress but as a concept to be understood. Once we have
contemplated this abstraction, our lives remain exactly as before! No. God
wants to work in us, to transform us. The word is to be something efficacious,
something that asks to be received. The dramatic events of this Gospel show how
the word can be rejected. And we can reject it too, or turn it into something
empty and vain. Let us be wise, let us be small, let us be poor, let us be
stupid before the word of God, let us allow things to return to the beginning.
There is always something to be discovered, always something new that the Lord
wants to do with us.
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