2 August 2024 Matthew 13:54-48
“A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and in his own house.”Matthew 13:57
It has been said often that, on any given Sunday, the congregation preaches at least half of the sermon. Every congregation comes wrapped in a personality that is either a barrier which even the saintliest, most electrifying preacher cannot penetrate, or is gasoline which will explode into living flame and power with only the poorest flicker of a homily. Great congregations make great preachers much more reliably than great preachers make great congregations.
The people of Nazareth had difficulty conceiving that God might raise up a prophet from among them, and appeared to think of their own town about the way Nathaniel did when he said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (cf. John 1:46). It never occurred to them to think that God was doing something astonishingly new in their own parish hall, right across the street from their own diner. It never occurred to them to suppose that the world could change starting with them. God was God, they thought, because He was predictable, because He confirmed what they already thought, and didn’t challenge it. That was the good thing, they thought, about the “old time religion” – you already knew what it was, even if a sleepy dullness was all you ever expected from it.
The reality, however, is that God means to do extraordinary things among ordinary people every day, and He has been doing precisely that since at least the Last Supper. The reality is that heaven touches earth, the very life of God is placed in the hands and the bodies of the faithful every time the Mass is celebrated. What St. Paul said is literally true for every believer: “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). If every Christian believed that the very life and power of God resided permanently in them, and was renewed at every Mass, everywhere, every day, there would be no more bad sermons, for every whisper of the gospel by even the wispiest of priests would turn into a spiritual hurricane in the pews.
The renewal of the Church and the sanctification of the times we all seek must be of course a renewal of Popes and Bishops, of priests, deacons and religious, of schools and dioceses. Most of all, however, it must be a renewal of the lay faithful because the sanctification of the world is their job, our job. The renewal of lay faithful must be the kind that makes us permeable by the gospel, must make all our systems – moral, spiritual, political, economic, educational, familial, local – more sensitive to the presence and power of God. Of course that means we have to change the way we spend our time. Of course that means we have to spend more time immersed in Holy Scripture and prayer. Of course that means we have to change the way we talk, and who we talk to, and what we talk about. Of course that is enough work to make some stumble and grumble.
But it is worth it if it means every time we go to Church, whoever is there, whoever the priest is, we can expect enough power to start a hurricane.
Yorumlar