“Seeking
the face of God in everything, everyone, all the time, and his hand in every
happening; This is what it means to be contemplative in the heart of the world.
Seeing and adoring the presence of Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of
bread, and in the distressing disguise of the poor.” – Mother Teresa
(Gospel
Text:
JN 7:40-53)
Some in the crowd who heard these
words of Jesus said,
“This is truly the Prophet.”
Others said, “This is the Christ.”
But others said, “The Christ will not
come from Galilee, will he?
Does not Scripture say that the Christ
will be of David’s family
and come from Bethlehem, the village
where David lived?”
So a division occurred in the crowd because
of him.
Some of them even wanted to arrest
him,
but no one laid hands on him.
So the
guards went to the chief priests and Pharisees,
who asked them, “Why did you not bring
him?”
The guards answered, “Never before has
anyone spoken like this man.”
So the Pharisees answered them, “Have
you also been deceived?
Have any of the authorities or the
Pharisees believed in him?
But this crowd, which does not know
the law, is accursed.”
Nicodemus, one of their members who
had come to him earlier, said to them,
“Does our law condemn a man before it
first hears him
and finds out what he is doing?”
They answered and said to him,
“You are not from Galilee also, are
you?
Look and see that no prophet arises
from Galilee.”
Then each went to his own house.
“A
saint will not come from the slums of Calcutta, will she?” “A pope will not
come from Communist Poland, will he?” “A Doctor of the Church will not be a
girl from a remote French cloister, will she?”
Jesus’ critics were focused on the
fact that he came from an area of no particular significance. While they
speculated about Galilee versus Bethlehem, the home of the great King David,
they missed the way that Jesus’ wisdom and authority pointed to his royal
lineage. Fooled by his ordinary appearance, they could not discern the King of
kings and Lord of lords, the messianic “Son of David,” who himself raised David
from obscurity to nobility (1 Samuel 16).
Of course, they also were unaware that
the Messiah’s ordinariness was foreshadowed in the Scriptures: “There was in
him no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would
attract us to him… . We held him in no esteem” (Isaiah 53:2-3). Jesus was
overlooked then as he is today, just as the shepherd David was overlooked
before the Lord told Samuel, “Not as man sees does God see, because man sees
the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). In the same
way, many of the apostles would have been overlooked by anyone but God. Even
the first pope, St. Peter, was just a fisherman!
God
does not overlook anyone, hence neither should we.
Mother Teresa put it this way, ““Our
lives are woven with Jesus in the Eucharist,” she said. “In Holy Communion we
have Christ under the appearance of bread; in our work we find him under the
appearance of flesh and blood. It is the same Christ. ‘I was hungry, I was
naked, I was sick, I was homeless.’”
Again
and again in her writings Mother Teresa points us back to the altar. “Every
Holy Communion fills us with Jesus and we must, with Our Lady, go in haste to
give him to others. He made himself the Bread of Life so that we, too, like
Mary, become full of Jesus. We too, like her, must haste to give him to others.
We too, like her, serve others.”
AMEN!
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