Wednesday, Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

We are familiar with the saying, ‘Familiarity breeds contempt’. We see this saying working itself out in today’s gospel reading. Jesus returns to his home town of Nazareth. It was a very ordinary, insignificant, out of the way kind of place, which is never mentioned in the Jewish Scriptures. Jesus’ family were as ordinary as all the other inhabitants of this small town. He was the son of a ‘carpenter’, a term that can refer to a person with a skill not just with wood but with stone. Such a skill would have been in demand but indicated nothing exceptional. The people of Nazareth were familiar with Jesus’ family who continued to live among them and whose members they could name off. Rather than rejoicing in the life-giving power of his ministry and the wisdom of his teaching, the people of Nazareth were scandalized by him, because, in so many ways, he was no different from themselves. We encounter here the scandal of the incarnation. God was powerfully present to them through someone who was one of their own. God comes to us all in and through the ordinary and the everyday. The great saints never ceased being amazed at the mysterious presence of God that they sensed all around them. To grow in faith is to grow in our capacity to recognize the presence of the Lord in and through the ordinary and the familiar. What we call in the liturgy ‘Ordinary Time’ is filled with the mysterious presence of the Lord and every place can be holy ground. In today’s psalm, the one praying says, ‘You are my hiding place, O Lord’. The Lord can be our hiding place, protecting us from harm. There is also a sense in which we are the Lord’s hiding place. The Lord is present, often in a hidden way, in each one of us, and, also, in all the circumstances of our daily lives. The Word who took flesh and dwelt among us continues to dwell among us, even though we are not always aware of him. In the words of John the Baptist, ‘Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me’.