Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jesus was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them. This verse near the end of today’s Gospel reading from the sixth chapter of Mark is rather shocking, from a certain perspective, since it clearly ascribes a limit to what Jesus, the Son of God, can do. The Gospel text does not tell us that Jesus chose not to perform any mighty deed in his hometown, as if to rebuke the people for their lack of faith; rather, the Gospel tells us that Jesus was not able to perform any mighty deed there. The faith of the people—fundamentally, their openness and receptivity to God’s work—is necessary for Jesus to work miracles among them.
This principle applies just as well to us today as it did to Jesus’s fellow Nazoreans two thousand years ago. Our own faith—our own openness and receptivity to God’s work—is necessary for God’s grace to be effective in our lives. To paraphrase a teacher of mine: God only ever gives himself, and he does so completely. It is we who must continually learn to receive God’s self-gift more and more, and that means letting God continually re-shape our expectations, as much as the Nazoreans needed to reshape their expectations of who Jesus really was.
Today in our prayer, then, let us ask God for the gift of faith, for the openness and receptivity to his action in our lives, especially when that divine action comes to us in surprising or even difficult ways.