Jesus experiences the first open rejection from his own town and from his own people! They  were definitely astounded by the words he spoke, but they were not impressed by the family from which Jesus came. What a strange reason? Or better put, how “unreasonable” they were?   Is there any reflection of such happening in our times?

Some times we happen to listen to a sermon, which stirs us up greatly and we find it ‘astounding’ as the people of Nazareth. However, on hindsight, we find that this preacher is from a region or sect, which is ‘inferior’ and we are inclined to side with the people of Nazareth saying ‘how on earth this message can come from someone of that region?  Remember Nathaniel’s reaction to Andrew’s message about Jesus! The message is Ok, the medium is not OK and so we go on our same old way!

St. Paul, again to the Corinthians, gives us the sine-qua-non ingredient in order that this message falls on the fertile ground or falls for the fertility of that ground, which is LOVE. This message of St. Paul should penetrate all the realms of our life, in the family, in the community, in the church, in the society and in the very self of our own being.

Sometimes we happen to be the enemy of all the above groups and much more of our own self. We refuse to accept our own self. That is because we cannot like ourselves as we are, ‘I am created wrongly’, and ‘I should have been created like him or her’.  In other words, God has gone wrong in my creation!

The answer to this position comes from Jeremiah;

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a Prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1:5)

This prophecy is about Jesus, it is about Jeremiah, it is about any one called by God, anyone created by God and above all it is a prophecy about you and me!

In order to recognize this in our lives, we need to know the meaning of LOVE, which Jesus speaks about, which Paul elaborates to the Corinthians and about which we often speak, complain, and brag about, without even knowing what it is.

Fr. George