July 8, 2018

Has it ever happened to you that a joyful celebration somehow went sour? Today’s Gospel presents such an occasion in the life of Our Lord. What should have been a joyful homecoming turned hostile. The Jesus “outsiders” acclaimed, neighbors scorned. St. Luke goes on to tell us that in their wrath the people drove Jesus from the town to the brow of the hill, intending to hurl him off the cliff.

 

Today Nazareth is the largest city in northern Israel with a population of 76,000. (Now 70% Muslim and 30% Christian). In Our Lord’s time, it had only about 400 inhabitants and was considered a “backwater town” of uncultured people. Do you recall what Nathaniel said when he heard that Jesus came from Nazareth: "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" In my seminary days, it surprised me that students from all parts of the country knew the words that spanned the Delaware: Trenton Makes the World Takes. But they gave it their own twist, What the World Refuses, Trenton Uses. That’s the attitude many felt toward Nazareth.

 

I like the way Bishop Fulton Sheen described the people’s rejection of Jesus: They believed in God, in a kind of way, but not the God Who touched their neighborhood, entered into close dealings with them, and lifted hammers in the same trade shop.

 

What caused the people of Nazareth to close their minds to Christ and to miss the graces of that visit? Envy and prejudice! These sins made the soil of Nazareth unfertile and unreceptive for the word of the God. They are sins that can make us unreceptive as well.

 

Simply put, envy is the anger we feel at the goodness or excellence of another because we imagine it diminishes our own—and since we do not have what the other has, we do our best to pull them down so that we will look and feel better about ourselves! Pope Francis points out that envy leads to bitterness and gossip which he calls “weapons of the devil.”

 

Prejudice often refers to preconceived, usually unfavorable, judgments toward people or a person because of gender, political opinion, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race, language, nationality, or other personal characteristics. Listen to Fr. Louis Evely’s powerful description of prejudice:

 

There is a strong satanic satisfaction to the found in ‘classing’ a person, in identifying him once, and, as we hope, for all with the outward appearance, in reducing him to a single aspect of his character. It’s convenient. I’ve got rid of him. He no longer exists for me. It’s as if I had killed him. I have killed him.

 

Do we ever do that to people? It is what the Nazarenes did to Jesus.

 

What can safeguard us from these sins of Nazareth? We have to cultivate the virtue of humility! During our Mass let us pray for the grace of humility. Why humility? Humility breaks down the wall of arrogance and pride so that I can be open to the truth found in God’s Word, the truth about ourselves, and others! Humility breaks down resistance so that I can look at my attitudes and actions with honesty.

 

Humility reminds me that I am not perfect, that I have room to grow, that I need to change! Humility reminds me that I don’t have all the answers and that I am not always right. Humility opens me to the good in others and helps me to see that they are not always wrong and that that they have something to offer and that I can even learn from them. Listen to the way Cardinal Merry del prayed for humility: