Fourteenth Sunday in OT ‘B’

Today’s readings introduce Jesus as a prophet and explain how prophets and other messengers from God inevitably suffer rejection. The readings challenge us to face rejection and hardship with prophetic courage.

The First Reading, taken from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, tells us about his call from God to be a prophet. Yahweh warns Ezekiel that he is being sent to obstinate and rebellious Israelites in exile in Babylon. And so, as God’s prophet, he will have to face rejection and persecution for giving God’s message. The reading gives us the warning that as Christians who accept the call of Jesus and seek to follow Him, we also may face indifference and hostility, contempt, weakness, hardship and persecution, insults and rejection.

In the Second Reading, St. Paul gives us the same warning from his own experience that not only the prophets, but the apostles and missionaries also will have to encounter difficulties and rejection in their mission. Paul confesses that God has given him a share in Christ’s suffering – a chronic illness which gave him pain, a “thorn in the flesh,” so that he might rely on God’s grace and might glory in the power of a strengthening God. The apostle Paul invites us to rise above our own weakness and disability, cooperate with the grace of God and preach the word of God by word and example as he did.

Today’s Gospel passage shows us that many people of Jesus' hometown of Nazareth did not accept Him as a prophet because they knew Him and His family too well. They knew that he was a carpenter with no schooling in Mosaic Law and knew that He couldn’t be the promised Messiah who would come from Bethlehem as a descendant of David’s royal family. Besides, they were angry when Jesus not only didn’t work any miracles in Nazareth but rebuked them with prophetic courage for their lack of faith and warned that He would go to other people to do His preaching and healing ministry.

Today’s Scriptures challenge us to face rejection with courage and optimism. Very often our friends, families, or childhood companions fail to listen to us and refuse to accept the words of grace, love, and encouragement that we offer to them because they are too familiar with us… They are unable to see us as God’s instruments, the agents of God’s healing and saving grace. But we have to face such rejection with courage of the prophets because by our Baptism we are called to be prophets like Jesus, sharing in His mission. Our task is to speak the truth and oppose what is not of God. Let us also acknowledge, appreciate, and encourage the prophets of our time who stand for truth and justice in our society with the wisdom of God in their heads, the power of the Holy Spirit in their words and the courage of God in their actions.