14th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)
Sunday 7 July 2024 Mk 6:1-6
“He left that place and came to his hometown [Nazareth] and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they were scandalised by him.”
(Mk 6,1-3)
Jesus was without doubt an extraordinary personality, both in his speech – so rich in wisdom – and in his actions – marked by prodigious signs. And the people of Nazareth can do nothing but seize these aspects. However, Jesus’ exceptional nature is somehow obscured by the context in which He lives: He was one of them. He lived a normal daily life. They knew His family. At the end of v. 3 we read, “and they were scandalised by him”. Etymologically speaking, ‘scandal’ means a stumbling block on the path, something that is found on the road which somehow blocks the way ahead. Let’s reflect on this aspect: how many times in life do we miss out on blessings and opportunities, precisely because we remain scandalised? We have a pre-judgement and when things don’t go the way we have pre-judged they become a problem for us, a stumbling block. In this case, the obstacle is normality. We hunger for exceptionality and novelty, and we fail to realise that the Lord, Emmanuel, God with us, never ceases to seek us out and enter into the mundanity and normality of our daily lives. In that normality, God does exceptional things. So, let’s ask the Lord for the grace to let ourselves be stripped of our prejudice and pre-judgements: not allowing ourselves to be scandalised by creating a god in our own image, but shaping ourselves more and more in His image. Fr. Giuseppe
