Reflection at Morning Mass: Nazareth House.
Today’s Gospel has a special message for parents, children and families. It will help all of us to reflect and meditate often on this reading.
We see Jesus coming back to his home village. He is a changed person. He has grown. He is now bigger than his parents, bigger than his village. He seems to know more than his parents, more than his teachers, more than his rabbis. “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they all wonder.
They struggle to understand the transformation that has happened to Jesus. They fail to accept the growth that has happened. They cannot wrap their minds and hearts over the young man they knew so well, who is now looking and sounding so different. “He is the carpenter’s son surely? ……… So where did the man get it all?”
The people of his village failed to handle this confusion. Their wonderment leads them, unfortunately, to rejecting Jesus. They expected him to come back home still the same, without having changed. They wanted to see the son of their village acting in the ways customary to the village.
But his new way of thinking and talking about God, love, life, relationships, care for one another….are unfamiliar, and they reject him. “A prophet is only despised in his own country and in his own house, and he did not work many miracles there because of their lack of faith.”
I often participate with families and see them send off their children to university, sometimes overseas. I see how keen the parents want their sons and daughters to go and get an education. I see too how they expect them to come back home after three or four years. They look forward to see their children return with qualifications and be reunited with their family and they all live happily thereafter!
But it does not turn out like that, often. Sons and daughters come back grown up, educated, and transformed. They come back bigger than their parents, bigger than their teachers, bigger than their hometown. They come back dressing, talking, thinking and behaving differently.
Parents struggle to understand and accept this. They cannot imagine their little girl, their little boy, now seeing and choosing things differently from them. They cannot understand why they are feeling differently.
This confusion can lead to rejection. Returning children can feel misunderstood and unaccepted. They can walk away never to return. Parents of returning children can feel threatened and challenged by their grown children.
They can feel judged and looked down upon. They can become very fearful and angry at their own children. In their own country, and in their own home, children may feel unwanted, misunderstood, rejected and they move on seeking the recognition they failed to get at home.
Many parents have experienced this conflict. Many of us have experienced it with our parents and with our children. Today’s Gospel shows us that Jesus experienced the same conflict with his own people. Jesus is not a stranger to the mutual misunderstanding and rejection that happens between one and one’s people, and between parents and children. In his compassion he can help us deal with this conflict when it happens in our lives.
Let us pray in this Eucharist, that God may give us the grace to cope well with the conflict that comes when our children come back bigger and different. For the grace to accept that our children have changed and have now a life of their own.
Let us pray that God may help us deal with it well, when we stand before our own people and are not accepted. For the grace to accept that our people do not understand our new set of values and our new way of being.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
