“Jesus came to His home town and began to teach the people in their synagogue. They were astounded and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power?’” Matthew 13, 54
Jesus was both ordinary and extraordinary. He was like us in every way, except sin. He was fully human yet there was the wisdom and power of God at work within Him. St John expressed it succinctly when he said at the beginning of his Gospel that “the Word became flesh.” He was “flesh” like all of us. He was fully human, the Son of a carpenter, from a particular place in Galilee who lived at a particular time in history. Yet, He revealed God in a unique way. This is the scandal (or stumbling block) of the Incarnation that so disturbed the people of Nazareth.
The Son of the carpenter, the Son of Mary, is with us today as risen Lord in and through the familiar and the ordinary. He said to His first disciples, “whoever welcomes you, welcomes me,” “whoever welcomes a child in my name welcomes me,” and “as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.” The sacred and the secular are not so far apart are they? We meet the sacred in the secular, we meet the divine in the human. Something worth pondering today: we are always on holy ground.
Let us pray. “We ask you, Lord, that as we share in your divine life, you pardon our sins, be our consolation in this life, and give us unfailing guidance so that we may rejoice together in your Holy presence. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”
