Cycle C - Year II:

31 January 2016: Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Liturgical color: Green)

Gospel: Please read  Luke 4:21-30


To look beneath the surface....

How do you start a mission or a new project? An effective way, you want first to make an announcement about it in the media, even social media nowadays, or any public forum, so that people take notice.

This is what Jesus did when he started his public ministry. Returning to His hometown of Nazareth, Jesus went to the synagogue and read a passage from the prophet Isaiah describing the signs that the Messiah would perform. After reading our Lord sits down and declares to those in the synagogue, "Today, this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing." That is to say, Jesus revealed to His town mates that He was the Messiah and invited them to believe in Him and thus receive the goodness, grace and freedom of which the prophetic text of Isaiah spoke.

This first "sermon" of Jesus at Nazareth is significant because it shows how He Himself understood His ministry: His mission to the world is to make God's goodness and gracious love available to everyone. Jesus Himself is the incarnation of this divine loving presence of God.

Sadly, though the people of Nazareth were amazed at His gracious words, they rejected His claim as the Messiah. Because they knew Him to be just "the son of Joseph". And so our Lord said this famous biblical passage, "Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place."

Also, so often in the Gospels people who encounter Jesus fail to look beneath the surface. The town people of Nazareth, for example, saw only what they wanted to see in Jesus: He was the humble carpenter in their midst. Not surprisingly, throughout the Gospels, our Lord often speaks of those who are blind or deaf to His saving message because they cannot accept Jesus as the Messiah.

Even now, the temptation can be our own as well; we may be impressed of Jesus as a great preacher, or a miracle worker, or a good and saintly man. But our Christian faith is empty of its heart and substance if we do not see Jesus as our Messiah, as God in the flesh who died, and rose again to set us free from sin and evil.

In sum, the real question between the people of Nazareth (including in our own generation) and Jesus is a question of faith. Because faith is not a response to a certain number of miracles; instead faith is unreserved, total and unconditional trust in God that leads to an acceptance of all that He has said to us, through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Thus, true acceptance and following of Jesus involves openness to the Spirit's call to search our hearts. For this reason, Jesus does not need to prove His claim as the Messiah by performing miracles. Rather, once we listen to Jesus' preaching with a sincere heart, we become able, through God's grace, to commit ourselves to Him and see Him for who and what He truly is. In this way, we begin to share in the salvation our Lord Jesus promises to all His followers, not at some future time but already here and now, just as our Lord Jesus says, "Today, this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing."

In the Eucharist at Holy Mass, let us pray for God's grace to be able to look beneath the surface and see the Real Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

A blessed Sunday to us all. And thank you for a moment with God.

Ad Jesum per Mariam!