A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. When Jesus had come to Nazareth, he said to the people in the synagogue remember Nazareth was his own town. That's he had grown up there. Everybody knew him. And Nazareth, as you know, is up in the lake country, a little bit west of the Sea Of Galilee.
So our blessed lord is in the synagogue now. He's among his own people. Everybody there knows him. And Christ says, no prophet gains acceptance in his native place. Indeed, let me remind you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the heavens remained closed for three and a half years and a great famine spread over the land.
It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but to a widow near Sidon. Recall too that many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them in Israel was cured except the Syrian, Naaman. That's today's first reading. At these words, the whole audience in the synagogue was filled with indignation. They rose up and expelled Jesus from the town, leading him to the brow of the hill on which it was built, intending to hurl him over the edge.
But Jesus went straight through their midst and walked away from them. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Of course, you see the tie up between this first and second reading this morning. Here's Naaman, a Syrian, a non Jew, travels all the way West leaving his beautiful land and his own beautiful river to this little old country in the West with this paltry little stream.
He comes with a panoply of a king, his his master the king sent him. He comes arrayed in in rich robes with all kinds of gifts for the king who we he expects will introduce him to the prophet, and there'll be a big fuss made over him, and he hopes to be cured of his leprosy. So he comes, and the message he gets is go down and bathe in the Jordan River, that muddy old creek. He's insulted. He's insulted.
Because he wouldn't have been insulted at all if they'd have asked him to do something heroic, something magnificent, something splendid, something that called forth all his efforts, even maybe to exposing himself to some kind of a martyrdom. He would have done that. He was a leper. And what won't a leper do to be cured of his leprosy? He would have done anything but to go down and bathe in a muddy old creek.
The Jordan, you know, is not a magnificent river. It isn't it wasn't then and it isn't now. So he was insulted, and he said, fiddlesticks. This is a sham, and he started back to Syria. And then somebody with some common sense says, look, if someone had asked you to do something great, you would have done it without any hesitation.
Now that you've made this big investment in time and in money, as we would say today, for Pete's sake, have a little common sense and go down and throw your body into the old muddy creek. It won't hurt you. At least you can give it a try. So Naaman went down, bathed himself in the Jordan and was cured of his leprosy. Fine.
Now this reminds me of an experience I had a few years ago and I don't take much pride in this. I guess I handled it wrong. But anyway, someone came, had been away from the church for a long time and this person's sister also had been away from the church a long time but had come back and it had all kinds of experiences and now was a real reborn Christian and, you know, was on cloud nine. So this person came after considerable time and thought that this was what they would like to do too. So I said, What do I have to do?
I said, The first thing is to go to Mass on Sunday, or on Saturday night, or on Sunday night, because you have all of those choices. It's not going to disturb your weekend. Well, a couple weeks later it comes around, you know, nothing had happened, nothing. And above all, he got nothing out of it. He said, I'm bored.
And that was the end of that. Now what do we expect? What do we expect as Christians to be cured of our leprosy? Now don't let us kid ourselves. We are all more or less lepers.
See, don't don't pat let's pat ourselves between the shoulder blades of our own backs. We may break an arm doing that, you know. We are all in the state of leprosy because we are all in more or less separated from God. He isn't separated from me. Only to the extent which I push him away.
And I can push him away because you see I have heroic ideas. I take a take me. I committed myself nearly fifty years ago to be well fifty it is fifty years ago that I committed myself to be a priest because that was a year before I was ordained. That was a commitment. Well, of course, when I can't I don't remember the day I don't remember the day at all when I for my diaconate.
I don't have no recollection, but I'm sure that it was you know you were up on cloud nine and everything was just glorious and you were giving your life to God and and all of that, you know. Well then, how about the subsequent years? How about the dull boring hours in the heat of a summer or whatever that you had to prepare a lesson for the next day. That was glamorous. That was heroic, wasn't it?
Sitting in your old little room preparing something for a bunch of students who may go to sleep on you, being so eager for knowledge, you know. That was really something to be a priest of Christ, Yet this is the stuff life is made of. Life isn't made of a bunch of heroics. Even the heroes will tell you that. We are asked to follow Jesus Christ, and that's not an easy thing, but it's not a complex thing.
It really isn't. We make it complex. Our blessed Lord said, be simple minded, be like a little kid. He wasn't asking us to be childish, he was asking us to be childlike in the simplicity of following him. That's not too hard.
It's it's a matter of fact, you see, it's almost too easy. As I have said many times, you can get martyrs for any cause, and I stand by that phrase. For any cause. It's like going out in the middle of the street and starting look up the looking up at the sky. First thing you know, you have a crowd around you looking up at the sky.
No problem. We are asked to follow Jesus Christ. And remember, Christ spent thirty years before he ever opened up his public life. What happened in all that time? And remember, his public life may have been only two years.
That the percentage is pretty small, isn't it? And so this is what I'm this is what I emphasize about the the opus dei movement. See, there's nothing new about opus dei, the work of the lord. What else are we supposed to be doing but the work of the lord? But what they this movement called over the work of the lord opus dei, what that has emphasized is the value of our everyday commonplace, boring, mediocre, unheroic daily living.
That's the stuff life is made up of. Supposing we let me tell you, I this is not a supposition because this is the way many people today are solving what we call moral problems. Am I comfortable with it? Am I comfortable with it? That's the test.
Or it used to be the am I fulfilled? It's the same thing, you know. Because what we've done is put the ego on the pedestal. Supposing as I said, we don't have to suppose it. Men and women are doing it today.
As regards their marriages, divorce, separation, children, all kinds of decisions. Am I comfortable with that decision? Are you comfortable with that decision? Fine. That's that's good for you.
Oh, no. You're not on you're you're uncomfortable with it? That's wrong for you. Situation ethics. We are called to follow Jesus Christ, and lots of times we're going to be downright uncomfortable.
I have it on good authority that Christ did not enjoy carrying his cross. And remember, this isn't being being a sadist. This isn't being a pessimist. Our blessed lord has one standard of being a Christian, and that's picking up his cross and following him. You can't escape that.
There wasn't anything heroic about Christ's passion and death, believe me. Nothing heroic. It was despicable. There was nothing heroic about it. It didn't have the glamour of a Maximilian Kolbe at all.
Maximilian Kolbe was a hero. Christ was no hero. He was the scum of the earth. Put him on a cross. Get rid of him.
They didn't even give him a decent execution. That's Christ, the son of god. And all you're do, all you're asked to do is to follow him. The name of the father and the son, holy spirit. Amen.
The lord