Today the Church celebrates the memorial of Saint John Bosco, the nineteenth century Italian priest who through his zeal for providing an education for disadvantaged children became known as “Father and Teacher of the Youth.”
St. John Bosco, himself, came from humble beginnings. Having lost his father at age two, John grew up working in his family farm. When he heard God’s call to the priesthood and began to seek out an education, his older brother became angry and whipped him saying he was to be “a farmer like us!”
Mark’s Gospel today tells a similar story: Jesus, a man who follows and teaches the will of God and yet is rejected and scorned by his own. Little did St. John Bosco’s brother know that the saint would go on to found an order that has transformed Catholic education throughout the whole world. Little did the congregation at the synagogue know they were standing before the Word made flesh who had come to heal and redeem us all.
May we learn to be more open to God’s mighty work that so often goes against our desires and expectations.