Sunday Gospel Reflection
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Luke 4:21-30 | Jan. 30, 2022
The Fulfillment
Marj Baynosa
Ministry of Lectors and Commentators
In the Gospel (Luke 4:21-30), Jesus inaugurated his public ministry on a Sabbath, declaring to the people in the synagogue that the Scripture passage from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah has been fulfilled in their hearing. The next verse speaks of everyone speaking highly of him and being amazed by the words he was speaking to them. Yet this is followed by passages that tell of the crowd opposing and rejecting him, and these are people from his own native place, Nazareth.
His own people who have been expecting a Messiah rejected him, failing to see the Savior in him and rejecting the spiritual kingdom that he was offering to them. Yet despite the rejection, Jesus spent his public life with these people. He preached to them and showed them miracles, giving them the message of God’s kingdom. But in the end, most of them asked for his death on the cross.
As Catholics, we would not be openly denying Jesus. We would not be trying as well to throw him to his death over a cliff.
But in private and in our relationships with others, can we confidently say that we do not reject him and his teachings and act as if we do not know him?
Can we say that we really love God?
Do we recognize his presence in others and in the poor?
Do we see his hand in our lives?
Do we see the face of Jesus in the pain and sufferings of our brothers and sisters?
Do we carry out our mission as baptized Christians, the way the Prophet Jeremiah carried out his vocation and mission, with fervor and determination knowing that God is always with us to deliver us?
In all these, we are called to love as Christians. And yet in our midst, there are many people who feel unloved and unwanted. How do we love according to God’s standards, as St. Paul has expressed in the famous love passage in his letter to the Corinthians, which is to say, is more demanding, and yet also more fulfilling?
Amidst life’s stresses and distress, how do we live rooted in the presence the way Jesus did in the midst of distress while facing the people who wanted to hurl him down a cliff?
May we always find God’s will in our lives despite the distress and rejections that we may be experiencing in life.
——————–
Artwork:
Jesus in the Synagogue at Nazareth
by Greg K. Olsen
