Coffee With God

 

Reflection: Luke 4:24-30

What had irritated the assembly in Nazareth were the words of ‘grace’ of Jesus. And the villagers – their village heads expelled Jesus from their village. The word ‘village’ in the Gospels always had a negative connotation. The people of a village remained closed-minded, attached to their traditions, not wanting to change and the villagers remained resistant. That’s why when the evangelist Mark narrates Jesus healing the deaf and dumb man in 7:31, Jesus took him away from the people. To open the ears to help him listen something new and to help him to speak in a new way, it was necessary to guide him away, take him out from the noise of the crowd. And when Jesus healed the blind man from Bethsaida in Mark 8:22, he repeats the action, takes him out of town and helps him see the world in a new way. After healing him, Jesus tells him not to go back to the village. If you go back to your old ways, , you are returning to your blindness. Jesus and his message were rejected because the people could not take criticisms. As announcers of the Gospel, if what had happened to Jesus does not happen to us, we should ask ourselves: Did I preach the authentic Gospel or I just sought to say what people expected, what they liked to hear? Sometimes it is misunderstood that a capable evangelizer is one who does not provoke, the one who does not disturb, the one who says what people like to hear, and does things that have always been done… But, the aim of an evangelizer is not to please people, nor to speak what people expect him to speak but to announce the Word of Christ. Do we experience resistance to changes from certain traditions that have little or nothing to do with faith in Christ? In our Church communities, that is what the people would love to observe and practice. That is why we come across some very good Catholics, who but reject the teachings and life of Pope Francis as heretical. Jesus did not dilute his message to win the sympathy of the people of his hometown. The Gospel must be announced in its authenticity, it can be received or rejected, but not modified. One day two bishops met. One of them lived in a place where Christians were persecuted, and his colleague asked him: How do you live as a Christian in a place where you are persecuted? The bishop was a little pensive and then goes to his colleague and says: ‘What I do not understand is how you manage to live as a Christian without being persecuted?’