Alcatraz and note in cell “If you meet me and forget me, you have lost nothing. If you meet with Jesus Christ, and forget him, you have lost everything”.
Many people, who were baptized and confirmed Christians have lost contact with Jesus over the years. They no longer go to church or pray or attend the sacraments. In a real sense, they have “forgotten” about Jesus. He plays no active part in their lives. Interestingly enough, that is not true of those in jail. There are so many prisoners who I have met who have discovered, or rediscovered their Christian faith in prison. I suppose a main reason is that faith is all they have to sustain them during their time in jail. Perhaps for many of us, we are living pretty comfortable lives, and so don’t feel that we really need Jesus, or God, or any kind of faith. That is why God allows, not sends but allows, trials and tribulations to come upon us to break through our indifference and stubbornness.
It must hurt and distress Jesus that so many in our Western world these days are indifferent to him, feel no need to have anything to do with him day by day. I’m sure his experience in his home town of Nazareth in our gospel today must have dealt him a hard blow. This is certainly not a case of “Local Boy Makes Good”, but rather “Local Boy comes home and is totally ignored.” This leads to Jesus’ rather rueful words “A Prophet is not without honour, except in his hometown, and among his own kin, and in his own house”. For Jesus, this is certainly a case of “Familiarity Breeds Contempt”. The psalm today concludes with a reference to the “scorn and contempt” experienced by the poor and humble at the hands of the rich and arrogant elite of society. If you and I have ever experienced similar put-downs and rejections from others, then we can empathize with our psalmist today. And so does Jesus in our gospel passage today.
And not just this one time. Throughout Jesus’ life and ministry on earth, he is continually put down, rejected, vilified, treated with scorn and disdain – from the religious and spiritual leaders of Israel, the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees , but also from his own family who even try to have him locked up in a mad-house, because they think he has taken leave of his senses (cf Mark 3:20-21). How awful for Jesus to have such a reaction from his own kith and kin. It leads to him, rather sadly I feel, saying in the presence of his family when they come looking for him: “Who are my true mother and brothers? . . . Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:33,35). His family have put Jesus down, now it is his turn to put them down. So poignant, so sad.
It is perhaps to teach St Paul a necessary lesson in this regard, that God refuses his request for help when dealing with his “thorn in the flesh” that he mentions in our second reading today. Biblical scholars believe that this particular “thorn in the flesh” refers either to an opponent who is making it difficult for Paul to evangelize in Corinth, or it refers to a particular physical or moral weakness that Paul is struggling with. Whatever it is, Paul clearly expects God to remove the problem from him, so that he can carry on preaching the gospel – surely God would agree to answer his prayer. But no. Completely against Paul’s expectations, God tells him that he is not going to remove the problem. Instead, Paul will experience weakness with regard to overcoming his problem, and God wants him to have that experience of weakness. Because Paul, up to now, has experienced God answering all his prayers, and he has become somewhat complacent, expecting that God will always come through and answer his prayers for help immediately. This has made Paul a touch arrogant and unsympathetic towards others who struggle to overcome their weaknesses.
So God says to Paul “No! I am not going to remove this problem you have immediately. Rather, I am going to let you experience what so many others go through, when their prayers aren’t immediately answered, when in their helplessness, they have to turn to God and throw themselves on his mercy and power”. God is saying to Paul “So long as I keep on answering your prayers straightaway, you never have to struggle with doubt and fear and failure, as so many Christians have to do. So I am going to make you feel how these others feel, when they don’t see an immediate answer to their prayers and have to grow in faith and trust that I will eventually step in.” You know, I believe that, in his early days as an evangelist, that Paul was somewhat ruthless and self-willed, and intolerant of others’ struggles and weaknesses But after encountering his own weakness and realizing that this was part of God’s will for him, Paul softened, mellowed a lot in his later years. He became more accepting of his own failures and weaknesses, and of the weaknesses of others. He lost that self-will, and arrogance and became more tolerant of others’ struggles and weaknesses.
So, when we experience that our prayers to the Lord for help are not immediately answered, it could be that the Lord is using that experience to change something in us that is hard-hearted and intolerant, self-willed and reluctant to receive correction from others, even from God. He is teaching us to embrace our weakness, and bring that to the Lord, so that he can show his power and strength in and through our weakness. When I was ordained a priest, over 35 years ago, someone gave me this verse from our second reading to be my guiding Scripture through my life: “my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness”. And time and again, I have experienced how my failures and struggles have forced me to rely on God’s power, and things have gone much better for me as a result. In the words of Paul in our second reading: “Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ, for whenever I am weak, then I am strong”. As we see in todays’ gospel, even Jesus didn’t win them all. Even he experienced failure and rejection, when he was only trying to do good. That should give us consolation, brothers and sisters, and cause us to accept failure and rejection in our own lives and ministry, and cause us to experience great joy, discovering that it is precisely at the moments when we are most weak, that God displays his super-strength in and through us.