Coffee With God

Reflection: Matthew 13: 54-58

After the “Discourse of the parables” (Mt 13: 1-52), the Gospel of Matthew presents Jesus in the synagogue of his native, in Nazareth, rejected by the people who knew him well. Nazareth is the place of faith, because it is the place where that famous response to the invitation of God took place: “Let it be done to me according to your word!” It is the place where humanity responds fully to God for the first time through the response of Mary. It is the place of willingness to accept God’s plan, but it is also the place of unbelief. People of Nazareth were suspicious and perhaps jealous of his popularity and acceptance in the neighbouring villages. Their refusal to accept novelty of his teaching prevented them from being healed by his compassion. We run this same risk when we take the gospel for granted. When we read a passage from the Bible, do we think, “Oh, I know this already!” Unless we spend time with the Word of God to meditate and reflect on it, we failed to be inspired and healed by the Word. During his Angelus prayer on July 4 this year, Pope Francis gave a beautiful reflection on the attitude of the villagers of Nazareth: Jesus’s fellow villagers knew him for thirty years in the same way and they thought they knew everything! They remained at the exterior level and refused to know what was new about Jesus. When we allow the convenience of habit and the dictatorship of prejudice to have the upper hand, it is difficult to open ourselves to what is new and allow ourselves to be amazed. We think we know Jesus, that we already know so much about Him and that it is enough to repeat the same things as always. And this is not enough with God. But without openness to God’s surprises, without amazement, faith becomes a tiring litany that slowly dies out and becomes a habit, a social habit. Pope Francis stressed on the word “amazement”. Amazement happens when we meet God: The people who encountered Jesus and recognised him felt amazed. And we, by encountering God, must follow this path: to feel amazement. Why didn’t Jesus’s fellow villagers recognise and believe in Him? Because they did not accept the scandal of the Incarnation. They thought it was scandalous that the immensity of God should be revealed in the smallness of our flesh, that the Son of God should be the son of a carpenter, that the divine should be hidden in the human, that God should inhabit a face, the words, the gestures of a simple man. This is the scandal: the incarnation of God, his concreteness, his ‘daily life’. Pope Francis concluded by quoting St. Augustine who said “I am afraid of God, the Lord when he passes by.” But Augustine, why are you afraid of God? “I am afraid of not recognising the Lord when he passes by.”