2 September 2019
Monday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time
“They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong.” (Luke 4:30) Such was the reaction of the people in Jesus’ hometown to His words of preaching. Overfamiliarity, presuming that they fully and entirely comprehended this hometown prophet, deafened the ears of the Nazareans to the very words of liberty and healing and salvation which Jesus came to make a reality for them. Closing themselves to the mystery which dwelt in one they had seen and lived with since He was a child, they preferred to attempt to throw him over a cliff than humbly to allow Him to transform their lives.
What is our reaction to the preaching of Christ? What does He might when He addresses His words to us? We pray that we might hear with reverence the proclamation that He has been anointed “to bring glad tidings to the poor [. . .] liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,” that we might hope that Jesus has been sent thus to us in our need. (Luke 4:18) When the sense of reverence before the mission of Christ begins to deepen in us, then we may even dare to hope in the truth of the resurrection of the dead, described by St. Paul, and above all that in the end we may eternally enjoy what St. Paul proclaims, “Thus we shall always be with the Lord.” (1 Thess 4:18) May we humbly allow the Lord to draw near to us in this life, that we may reap the fruit of such reverence: living with Him now and forever.