By Fr. Eugene Lobo SJ –
Fourth Sunday of the Year January 30, 2022
Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19; 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13; Luke 4:21-30
The theme of the liturgy of today is the prophetic call from God given to each individual personally. Through this call, God communicates his message of love to all. John tells us that God loved the world so much that he gave his only son for our sake that we may have life through him.
This is sacrificial love and caring love. It is love that enables us to be compassionate, understanding, patient, forgiving, and accepting of others. Love sustains us with courage, with the power to endure, and carries us confidently through every challenge. God is concerned about each one of us and that he chooses to give himself to us.
In our life, God keeps on challenging us to prophetically confront suffering and division, to help the world to lead to suffering and new life. Jeremiah in today’s first reading is directed to give a prophetic witness to God, whose saving justice and compassion yearn to steer a wayward, stressed-out people away from impending disaster. Warned about the obstacles he will face, Jeremiah is instructed by God to stand firm. Jesus as a prophet in today’s Gospel challenges his own people to a new way of living, a new way of seeing things.
The First Reading of today tells us that Jeremiah’s service to God begins with his receiving the word of God. Jeremiah hears God announce that he was chosen to be a prophet even before he was formed in his mother’s womb. Here we have the dialogue between Yahweh and Jeremiah, which is a perfect example of Divine Love. Some of the Words that the Heavenly Father spoke are very touching. God tells the prophet of his personal choice from eternity. He says that even before he was born, God has consecrated him indicating his personal choice. Here God takes the initiative and calls Jeremiah to be the prophet.
God is omniscient and he does everything with a purpose and the mission is very clear. Now the Prophet is called by God to stand firm for him and be his mouthpiece. He is now the spokesperson of God to proclaim his message. He has to tell all that God has commanded him to do. When Jeremiah is scared at this command, God is present to support him and tells him not to be afraid because he will always be close to him. He gives him a sign saying that he will like a fortified city, like an iron pillar and strong as a bronze wall.
Today’s Second Reading taken from the first Letter to the Corinthians. Paul speaks about the importance of the gifts of the spirit which each one has received and says that love is the most important gift of all. Love indeed is a gift. Loving is an art that has to be received and nurtured. Love is defined as Eros or passionate love, philia or intimate love, and Agape or unconditional divine love. Agape is the love that God has for every single person and the kind of love which should be the characteristic of the true follower of Christ in his/her relationship with people everywhere.
Paul tells us that without agape none of the other gifts of the Spirit have any value. Everything becomes empty. He then describes the characteristics of this true love: It is kind, not envious, not boastful, not arrogant, not rude, not self-willed, not irritable, and not resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing but in truth, integrity, and wholeness. In spite of all obstacles, it perseveres.
The Gospel of today follows what we were reading last Sunday: Jesus was in Nazareth, his hometown, and he preached in the synagogue. Jesus, at the beginning of his public life, gave to the people, what today we would call his ‘mission statement’, using the words of the prophet Isaiah. When Jesus proclaimed that the text from Isaiah he had read has been fulfilled in their hearing, he was in fact applying it to himself.
The Messiah they have been waiting for was now present to them here in the person of Jesus and the words of the prophet Isaiah were fulfilled in him. His ministry was going to fulfill what the prophets had promised for centuries. His Kingdom has begun to be realized in his works of healing, reconciliation, and liberation from evil powers. What the Lord was saying truly touched his listeners, so much so that they were very surprised at the discourse given by someone they had once known and who, now, appeared to them as another man, a man unlike any other, a man who surpassed all others, for, in fact, he was at once God and man: “They wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.”
At first, the crowd was absolutely amazed at Jesus’ eloquence, and the interpretation of the scriptures. They were truly shocked and were not sure how to respond to his words. His eloquence was beyond their expectations. At the same time, they did discover that they were too familiar with him. They knew him too well and they know his parents too and the entire family history. They knew him as Jesus, a carpenter and the son of a carpenter, and how could he speak like this? Their expectations of Jesus were very human and what they saw in him was something extraordinary.
The tradition had told that when the messiah comes he will come from nowhere but here was the messiah they were too familiar with. Jesus knew that as soon as the implications of what he has said sink in, the people would be outraged. Hence he took them on the offensive. He knew that the people of Nazareth wanted him to do for them what he was reported to have done to the gentiles in Galilee.
Jesus told them that a prophet normally was not accepted in his own place. The two stories Jesus told, one about the action of Elijah caring for the widow in Zarephath during the famine caused by three and half years of drought and the other about Elisha, mediating a cure for Naaman the Syrian, particularly when the Syrians were the hated enemies of Israel, both showed God’s prophets bypassing Israelites and helping the gentiles.
This same prophetic call was given to Jesus and he saw it being fulfilled in his own ministry. This made the people of Nazareth angrier as Jesus was shunning out his own people and was reaching out to the outsiders. They felt that he had betrayed his own people. In a short time, the people of Nazareth had gone from praising their own person to planning to kill him. Their efforts failed as Jesus filled with the spirit walks away quietly from the middle of them since his time had not come. This story of his rejection was just a beginning of the opposition he would receive throughout his life and his ministry. The people to whom Jesus was sent were the very people who rejected him.
The implication was that the mission of Jesus cannot be limited to one social or religious group any more than God’s love can. The people of Nazareth failed to understand that with God love begins wherever the human need is found. No one was going to tell them that religion had to go so far as Elijah was travelling to Sidon or Elisha cleaning a Syrian or even Isaiah teaching good news to the poor and liberty to the captives.
Besides this, Jesus for them was a bundle of contradictions. His mission was weighed in favour of the poor, yet he dined with the wealthy. He reprimanded the disciples for being ambitious and yet called on them to be rich at heart and be at the service of the poor and hungry to give alms and feed when hungry. He made clear that his message was for all and no one was exempt from his call. His disciples themselves were chosen from every walk of life. In the Synagogue he challenged them and identified himself with the likes of Elijah and Elisha. This was blasphemous for the people.
Contemplating the scriptural readings of today we are able to perceive how God manifests His Divine love in a very personal way. Through the incarnation in Jesus Christ, God came to dwell among us. What great love God has for us, that He set aside His divinity, took human form upon Himself, and dwelled in our midst so we may come to know Him as He truly is, holy, perfect, eternal, merciful, forgiving, etc… There is no other like Him.
St John in his Gospel explains the depth of God’s love which is sacrificial love and an all-understanding event. It grants eternal life in and through him. When God came down to dwell among us, all did not accept the manifestation of His Divine love. In the Old Testament, we see how the prophets were rejected in their hometown and by their own people. Now Jesus also experiences similar rejection by his own town’s men. In the eyes of the people of His hometown, He did not meet their standards. Because they knew Him since His childhood, He was nothing special to them. This is true of all human situations where familiarity with the person does not allow a person to see beyond what is utterly human.
The word of God tells us that the Son of God came to earth and took on flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary in order to save all men. But who has the greatest need for salvation? Is it not those who do not yet have any link to God, the True, and the only? The Jewish People had been elected by God to be his People: already, the fact of being Jewish established in them a certain link to God, a link of the corporeal order.
Furthermore, he who was not Jewish lacked this link. But when the Son of God came to earth, he brought with his grace, a created divine good, which was capable of establishing between God and any man or woman a link of the spiritual order. For John says that the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus.
The grace of God is almighty, and the words of grace that Jesus speaks to the inhabitants of his village truly have the power to convince everyone of this astounding fact: Jesus, one of their own, is not the only man but also, and first, God. However, a man, any man or woman, remains free with respect to the almighty grace of God: this is the Mystery of Love, this is the very Mystery of God! Now, Jesus knew in advance that the inhabitants of Nazareth would reject him, as Saint John wrote, speaking in a general manner: “He came to his own home, and his own people received him not.” This is why Jesus does not intend to perform many miracles in order to try to prove his divinity: a miracle is an exemption from the laws of nature, and God does not produce miracles in vain, for what he has created is good and perfect in itself, even if man and sin have corrupted this initial creation.
This is the contradiction or paradox: the more loving we are, the more people our love embraces as we transcend labels and prejudices dividing people, the more likely we will be rejected, persecuted, and hated – even by ‘religious’ people. On the one hand, the message of Truth and Love has been rejected and has been attacked and abused but people have experienced a special strength to carry on.
As the life of Jesus clearly indicates, there is a price to be paid for being a person of love but it is a price well worth paying. When the grace of God is offered to us, let us seize it! Let us fear that the grace of God may pass us by, never to return … ever. In fact, the grace of God is destined for both the Jews and the pagan Nations. The first Disciples of Christ, the Apostles, were all Jews. Jesus did not want to reject his People, but rather he wanted grace to dominate in them, he wanted the corporeal link they had with God to be dominated by a link of a higher order, a spiritual one, that of grace.
The Parish Priest decided to visit one of his parishioners who had stopped coming to church. The priest found John in his garden under hot sun taking care of his roses and vegetables. Understanding the purpose of the visit of the Pastor, John said: “Father, you tell us and he is correct. That God knows everything. He knows my name, my existence, and whether my soul will be saved or damned.” It is true said the priest. He knows us all and the whole universe. Then said John what is the use of my coming for mass and all the boring service since God knows all and it is already destined.
The priest told him that he has a really good point and he agreed with him. Then going around the garden the priest told John, “My friend, you have some fine roses here and the vegetables look great.”
John felt proud and said that he takes good care day and night. Then the priest said look John we agreed that God knows all and all the future and past is known to him. Yes nodded John. If God knows all things why do you slog? He knows where your vegetables go and where the roses will reach tomorrow. Why do you slog then when all is determined by God? The man kept quiet. Next Sunday he was kneeling on the front row in the church.