12 July 2022
Tuesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Jesus has performed mighty deeds and miracles throughout Galilee and beyond, and yet whole towns have rejected Him. Woe to Chorazin; why? Though we know not what, Jesus had done great deeds and they rejected Him: they rejected their own salvation. Woe indeed!
At or near Bethsaida, the hometown of Peter, Andrew, and Philip, Jesus had healed a blind man and fed five thousand people. This town, too, rejected Jesus and thus their salvation. What hope have they?
The hardness of heart found in these towns is greater than even Tyre and Sidon, pagan cities known from the Old Testament: even they would have believed because of what they had seen. Capernaum is not only promised woe, but death, for their rejection of Jesus and the life and truth He offers is the greatest of all. Jesus likely had a home there, taught and healed there. He drove out an unclean spirit, healed Simon’s mother-in-law of fever, healed the centurion’s servant from a distance away, healed the paralytic, and so on. Being somewhat the “headquarters” of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, Capernaum had been privy to many of Jesus’ great works. And yet they still refused to believe in Him. Thus their rejection is greater than the sins of Sodom that earned its destruction, for it is one thing to be a city full of wickedness and sin, to seek to defile the ambassadors of the Lord, but it is another level of pride and hardness of heart to reject God Himself when He comes and performs great deeds in your midst. Sodom was wiped from the face of the earth; Capernaum, if she does not repent, will go down to the netherworld.
May we eagerly receive the Lord when He comes into our midst!