Friday, Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

We used to talk about the tall poppy syndrome. When somebody in a locality is seen to be getting too big for their boots they are quickly cut down to size. There is probably less of that around today. Nowadays, when somebody in a town or a locality does well in the field of work or sport or whatever, everyone in the locality is delighted. It is as if one person’s success is giving everyone a lift. However, that is not what we find happening in today’s gospel reading. Jesus has returned to his home village in Nazareth for the first time since he left to begin his public ministry. In the meantime, his neighbours have come to hear of his miraculous powers and of the wisdom of his teaching. They get to experience the wisdom of his teaching for themselves when he preaches in the local synagogue. However, their response to him is very dismissive. They seem to be saying, ‘He is a carpenter’s son. We know his family. Who does he think he is?’ God was paying them a visit through one of their own, and they couldn’t see it. How could God be coming to them through someone so familiar, so like themselves in many ways? Could a carpenter make present the Creator God? The gospel reading is reminding us that God, the Lord, often comes to us through the familiar, the day to day realities that make us our lives. We sometimes think we have to go on a long journey to some holy place in order to meet the Lord. Yet, the Lord comes to meet us where we are, in our own native place, what Jesus refers to in the gospel reading as ‘our own country… our own house’. We need to keep cultivating an openness to the many ways the Lord can touch our lives through the familiar.

Twitter:  @SJtBClontarf RC
Facebook: @SJtBClontarf
Tumbler: St-John-the-baptist-Clontarf-Rd