Matthew 13:54-58
for Friday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
For nearly all of Christ’s earthly lifespan, he kept his secret from the townsfolk of Nazareth.
From boyhood he had joined them in the synagogue every Sabbath.
He had kept the holy days with them year after year.
They seem not to have known him as one of a kind with the untold wisdom and wonderworking might of the greatest of prophets until he began to preach and work throughout the land when he was about thirty.
And then Nazareth only disbelieved and spurned him.
So, as the Gospel says, he did not work many mighty deeds there because of their lack of faith.
Not many mighty deeds— perhaps only a few— not enough to stir Nazareth to awe.
Anyway, he did not use miracles to that end.
Nazareth turned its back on the prophetic wisdom and might of Christ, just because he was too familiar and too ordinary until now.
Nazareth was blind, thickheaded and stubborn.
We risk being the same whenever we turn away from God in ordinary and familiar things.
Saint Benedict wanted monks to stay mindful of holiness in the most ordinary work and familiar things of daily life.
He wrote [Rule 31:10-11] that a monk is to:
regard all utensils and
goods of the monastery as sacred vessels of the altar.
Nothing is to be neglected.
Monks are to seek and serve God in the ordinariness, familiarity and routine of the monastery.
Similarly, God chose to be really present in the ordinariness, familiarity and routine of Nazareth for at least nine tenths of his earthly lifespan.
In a similar way, here at Mass in the ordinariness of eating and drinking, God is really present.
God, his wisdom and mighty works are really present in his Eucharistic Body and Blood, not hitting us over the head with showy miracles, but nonetheless expecting our faith, both here and in the ordinary things of our daily lives.
With
Saint Benedict [Rule 57:9] we must
say and seek that God be glorified in all things—
all things great and small.
Turn. Love. Repeat.
