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Jesus came to his native place and taught the people in their synagogue.
Jesus is constantly coming to visit us, teaching us, and making his word known to us.
For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them (see Matthew 18:20).
He is present in the Liturgy of the Word, where he and he alone can unlock the scroll and "and utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world" (see Matthew 13:35).
Worthy are you to take the scroll
and to open its seals
(see Revelation 5:9).
He is not present only in his word proclaimed in liturgy. Even outside of the mass he is always present in the Scriptures, which are living and active (see Hebrews 4:12). This word of his is not like other kinds of words, words of men, but is the word of God "which is now at work in you who believe" (see First Thessalonians 2:13).
Yet for all of the wonder that the presence of our Teacher ought to evoke in us do we not regularly take it for granted? Are we not at least sometimes like those in the synagogue at Nazareth, so apparently familiar with him that we are closed to the even the idea of "such wisdom and mighty deeds"? To be sure, in the past we know that there were such aberrations. But now we only seem to allow for a comfortable Jesus, one who fits neatly into our circumstances, and never does anything dynamic or new. The way this happens is subtle because we don't criticize him outright. We simply stop looking for anything new and begin to base all of our expectations our past experiences and the apparent limitations implied therein.
It is true that there is no new public revelation, that Jesus was the final word from God to us.
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world (see Hebrews 1:1-2).
But this fact does not mean God no longer moves and acts in the world. Indeed he is always doing something new (see Isaiah 43:19), drawing his sons and daughters ever deeper into his own heart. The word does not change. But we must change to accommodate ourselves to that word. We must let it work, and live, and act within us. We too easily imagine we have heard it all before and are too ready to doubt his power to bring about new mighty deeds in our world today.
And he did not work many mighty deeds there
because of their lack of faith.
We have faith in the sense of believing in the truths of our faith. But what does our faith cause us to expect? Does it make us hope in the sense that we are actively scanning the horizon to see where God is moving, and what he might do next? Faith can have this effect in us when we allow the words of Jesus to work within us, to be alive in us to the extent that they become the source of our life.
If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you (see John 15:7).
The building up of such expectant faith is one of the reasons for the feasts about which we read in today's first reading. Rather than taking the past action of God in the world for granted we learn to make a regular practice of celebrating it and thanking him for it. When we do so his word will be planted deeply within us where the enemy can't snatch it away, and where it can bear fruit.
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