There's a sense in which we believe, and to some extent rightly so, that a good man just
can't get ahead, always keeps the good men down, they always, the good are the ones that
always suffer, the good die young, we say.
And there is also a sense in which this is true in respect to our blessed Lord and Savior.
There's always a certain kind of cynicism about goodness, about good men, about truth
and truthfulness in this sad and misguided way.
It's a misguided world in which we live.
So that the only way for our Lord to save us was to suffer at the hands of wicked men
and to, in some respects, be a failure in the sight of men.
He came as the light of the world.
And the darkness did not...
He did not overcome that light, but he also came among his own, and his own did not receive him.
Our Lord made himself approachable by becoming a baby and living in a little town with his
mother and St. Joseph, his foster father, and worked as a carpenter in their midst.
And he had relatives, cousins, and aunts and uncles, and they knew him.
And he lived with them like any other.
He was obedient to Jesus and Mary.
And if he had come otherwise, he would not have been approachable.
Our Lord desired to be approachable.
He remains approachable for us because he humbles himself even further by appearing
and coming to us under the form of bread and wine.
But that very approachability...
For our Lord was also a liability.
When he began to speak and suddenly people saw him as somebody entirely different, he
knew things that nobody else knew.
He spoke with an authority that not even the scribes and the Pharisees had.
And they said, where did he get all this?
Where did he come up with this?
And they did not accept him.
Even though he worked miracles, he worked signs and wonders in their midst, they still
wouldn't the people of his own town wouldn't accept him and he was limited in what he could
do for them we're told that he only worked a few miracles there because of their lack of faith and
he was amazed our lord was not surprised in the sense that he didn't know what human nature was
like or or that his divine intellect was somehow surprised at what had taken place and and yet
it was a a contradiction and a sorrow that our lord should speak the truth and confirm the truth
with miracles and the people wouldn't believe simply because they thought they knew where he
came from and that they didn't like uh you know the fact that he was uh stepping above the rest of
of uh of everyone else but that's that's the way
life is and and and so um our lord in his divine wisdom and the providence of god
chose that that his his courage and fortitude his boldness of of of speaking the truth
and his willingness to endure this lack of faith to to live among his people in simplicity and
poverty and to stand up and say what was needed to be said would get him
you
you know contradicted and ridiculed and rejected and and ultimately crucified he made that our
salvation he made his own rejection the source of our salvation and so our lord who was rich
as we're told by saint paul and saint francis of assisi where god who was rich became poor for our
so that we might become rich he he uh descended to our level
not to our sinful level but he came down to us so that he might raise us up and the point at which
heaven and earth come together is is is ultimately the marriage of of the human of the divine and the
human but in our lord's life it not only takes the form of the incarnation where where the divine
nature is united to the human nature takes the form of the contradiction between the truth of god
and the frailty of men when god's truth and his goodness and his mercy comes in contact with human
nature god receives rejection god receives contradiction god receives no mercy from men
and it's and it's that that that that crash the the way in which divinity and humanity crash
together in the life of our lord that we find in the way in which divinity and humanity crash together
we find our salvation and we find our liberation from sin and uh are the the door of heavening of
heaven opening to each and every one of us so there's a sense in which when our lord says to
the people of nazareth the prophet is not without honor except in his own native place and among his
own kin and in his own house and then we hear that he was amazed at their lack of faith what a tragedy
in a sense what a what a uh
you know a lost moment the grace of god the visitation of god passing these people by
and yet somehow in god's divine providence this is also our blessing somehow we have been blessed
by the fact that our lord was rejected and and contradicted and now within our own lives
you know looking back on the gospel with hindsight
uh
we find that we have been blessed by the fact that our lord was rejected and and contradicted
we find ourselves in in more or less the same position
where our sinfulness is what crucified the lord and continues to crucify him
and yet his crucifixion his suffering and death uh is our salvation and somehow in in in the
providence of god we have to turn things around we have to um cease rejecting and turning our back
on the lord and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and
and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and the
s and begin
increase
the gratitude
of our hearts
for what he has done
because we are his people
we are the people of nazareth
we are the people to whom it came his own unto and he came
who did not receive him
and if we had received him
our if we it did receive him
then we would be better than we are
and we're not as
good as we could be
so there's to some extent and we are able to be part James whereas in the beginning as we much suffered and we've been looking ahead we've found themselves but we've become more like little children again than they were when i was that's why we are because these
extent what we read about in today's gospel applies to us at well. And God has always
faced the frailty of human nature and has not abandoned it. When we read about the prophet
Ezekiel and the way in which God raised him up to be a sign and a mouthpiece for God to
his people, we hear about the reality of human nature, how the Israelites were rebels who
rebelled against the Lord. They and their ancestors, God says, have revolted against
me to this very day, hard of face and obstinate of heart are they to whom I am sending you.
So our Lord had no illusions about who he was dealing with. He wasn't the eternal optimist
whitewashing the sinful.
No, he faced it square on. And yet he had the compassion to send the prophets. The prophets
were not popular people because they told things that told things to they said things to people
that they didn't want to hear. And yet the prophets were God pursuing his people. He didn't
just give them the law and then leave them to themselves to to either follow it or not follow
it. And then just, you know.
Reward them or wipe them out, depending on whether or not they they follow the law.
When they didn't follow the law, he sent his prophets. He didn't have to. He sent a Jonah
to Nineveh because Nineveh was going to be wiped out by God. And when Jonah preached
in Nineveh and they converted, Jonah was sort of, you know, a little bit disappointed and
beside himself because I'm a prophet. I want to tell them that in 40 days they would be
destroyed.
And they repented. It seems like, you know, I didn't didn't, you know, really get to be a
prophet. And the Lord rebuked Jonah and said, that's the whole point of your prophecy was to
bring them to conversion. And they were converted. And so even in the threats in which our Lord
directed towards his people, it was God's love pursuing the wayward. And so our Lord came to
face to face with the sinfulness of man.
Kind, the reality of it, the horror of it. And he entered into it to the point where to the point
where. To the point where our Lord assumed the sinfulness of mankind, the burden of the sins of
men fell upon the shoulders of our Lord as though he were the one who committed them. And in the
second reading, we hear about.
St. Paul. And. And how very often he was taken up into the ecstatic experience of God's revelation.
And yet. That that that grace, that consolation that came to him from God was given to him in
virtue of of the same kind of life that he had to live in.
And and he was the first prophet to have this, in this way. And he was the first prophet to have this, in this way.
And he was a man who was sent to tell people things they didn't want to hear. And he came face to face with the
sinfulness of mankind to the point that it brought him to tears. Often he would tell those he wrote to that
he was reduced to tears because they had turned away from the gospel and had pursued their former way of life.
And so he was torn between the ecstatic experience of God's revelation and the.
the beatings of satan and and the tribulations and trials uh of this world and sometimes he
he felt overcome and he said you know that he would wish to be delivered and our lord said to
him my grace is sufficient for you for power is made perfect uh in weakness and that's what we see
uh in today's readings and especially in the gospel where the power of god is joined to the
weakness of human nature and our lord allows himself to experience not moral weakness but the
the the human condition and he ultimately god chooses to be weak in order to make us strong
the weakness of god is wiser we're told by saint paul elsewhere than than the wisdom of men
um and saint paul therefore says therefore i am content with weaknesses
insults
hardships
persecutions and constraints for the sake of christ for when i am weak
then i am strong that's the paradox that's another one of the great paradoxes
of our faith virtue is strength the latin vere means both strength and man so a man
is a strong one virtue is manliness and that's what we're pursuing and yet we know that that
the power of god is not strong and that the power of god is not strong
is the power of god is the power of god is the power of god is the power of god is the power of power
God made manifest in us strengthens us to suffer, strengthens us to endure in the face of fear.
And it's a grace that comes only from God, not from any human source. And so we are always
dependent upon the Lord and upon his grace. So even though the people of Nazareth knew who our
Lord was, they said, is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary? They didn't fully realize that
he came from God through this wonderful and unprecedented miracle of the virginal conception
and birth from the blessed Virgin Mary. He became weak in our lady's womb. He became
dependent upon her so that he might be able to offer
our weakness to the father. And somehow we have to be strong. We have to become strong
in this mystery. We have to see in the patience and generosity of Christ with each and every one
of us, the very power of God. And it teaches us also in respect to the way we live and work with
and deal with one another.
That we have to have the same dispositions of Christ. The straight and narrow road is the harder
path. And it's the harder path because we have to always do the both and, not the either or,
not the silence in the face of evil, nor either using the naughty club of the word of God.
The word of God isn't a naughty club. It's a sword that separates the light from the
darkness. But it's a sword that our Lord applied like a surgeon, not like a barbarian.
And therefore, that's the hard road for us. You know, the forthrightness and boldness
of Christ, and yet the patience and the long suffering of the Lord, though He was amazed
by the lack of faith of his people, stuck it out to the very end.
Thank you for being with us today on this journey to Bethlehem. God bless you.
You know, a lot of us would say, if we came to the point where, wow, total rejection.
I would have just totally shocked, totally amazed at the fact that they don't even believe.
They don't believe.
They even see the miracles, and they don't believe.
A lot of us would have just said, that's it, I'm done.
And that was not the end for our Lord.
It was not even close to the end.
Our Lord continued to endure these things to the very end,
and the ultimate act of our salvation is his very death on the cross.
Ultimately, fortitude is about fear of death, and we all fear it.
And yet, true fortitude is about our willingness to face the cross, just as our Lord did.
And even though we may not die martyred,
every one of us dies a little bit every day if we are faithful to the Lord.
And for us, because we are baptized into the death and resurrection of the Lord,
that death is our life.
That death is our hope.
And that death we celebrate along with the resurrection,
the new life that comes from God alone in this holy sacrifice of the Mass.
So this is the wisdom of God.
This is what?
This is the answer to the question of the people of Nazareth.
Where did this man get all this?
What kind of wisdom has been given him?
What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands?
The mighty deed wrought by the hand of the Lord is our salvation on the cross.
And we always see it for what it is,
and recognize the power of God in his very weakness,
in the weakness that Christ assumed for us,
for our salvation.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.