GOSPEL POWER |FEBRUARY 3, 2021

WEDNESDAY | SAINT BLAISE, BISHOP AND MARTYR/ SAINT ANSGAR, BISHOP

4TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Gospel: MK: 6:1-6

Jesus left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went about among the villages teaching.

REFLECTION 

The humanity of Jesus is both the place where the divine is both revealed and concealed at the same time. In him, the sacred and the profane intersect; heaven meets earth, without people becoming aware of it. Ordinariness becomes God’s favorite garment, because it does not dazzle the senses of human beings, nor overwhelm their freedom. The possibility of rejection is a risk God takes when he enters the ordinariness of the human situation. But love is ready for that risk, for faith can only grow at its normal pace when faced with what is ordinary. Jesus suffers the rejection by his own townspeople who are scandalized by his ordinariness. But it is precisely by being rejected that Jesus fulfills his Messianic destiny and begins the transfiguration of ordinary earthly reality into the new creation.

PRAYER 

 Lord Jesus, open our eyes-of-faith to perceive the divine presence permeating every earthly reality and transforming it from within. Amen.