“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.  For previous Green Room entries, click here.

This morning’s Gospel reading is John 6:41–51:

The Jews murmured about Jesus because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” and they said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? Then how can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered and said to them, “Stop murmuring among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day. It is written in the prophets: They shall all be taught by God. Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

Greetings from up in the air! Today is a travel day for me, and the last few days a blur. I have not had time to properly prepare for a reflection this week, but I’ll just share a few thoughts.

The difficulties of being a prophet among one’s own people are well documented, and it’s not just prophets who find it a challenge. Familiarity may or may not breed contempt, but it does dispose people to cling to preconceived notions about a person and their authority. One of my first managerial assignments was in the same call center in which I’d worked as a shift operator, and everyone had to undergo a steep learning curve to deal with it — myself included. It takes time and patience to establish authority based on competence in those situations. For that reason, some larger companies are reluctant to promote from within in certain situations. Our archdiocese rarely assigns deacons to their home parishes based both on this Gospel, and on experience.

Jesus often encounters opposition to His teachings in the Gospels, but this one instance may have more sympathy among readers than others for this reason. We experience it often ourselves, especially in family relationships. I recall one argument I had with the Mathemagician when he was 13 or 14 years old about the nature of gravity. I scoffed at his explanation, basically ignoring the fact that my son was a math and physics phenom in favor of the resort-to-authority argument of “I’ve lived with gravity for longer than you have, pal. Aren’t you the kid who can’t find his own suitcase when it’s laying on the floor?” As most of these old-bull/young-bull arguments do, this one ended in a mutual huff … but as soon as he went to bed, I looked it up and found out he was right all along, and I had been dead wrong.

One of these days, I might even admit that to him. It’s been 17 years and counting, but who knows?

This is a common impulse in a fallen world. We believe we have perfect understanding where we do not, and we resent it when people suggest that we may have missed out on something. We also put people in convenient categories rather than open our hearts to them and at least give them an opportunity to prove themselves. The relationships in Nazareth at that time may not have been closely familial, but this was a small community where everyone would have known each other pretty well at the very least. Jesus had come back to include his neighbors, friends, and family in the great gift of salvation, but they could not see past His previous station in the community in order to recognize that gift.

How often do we do that ourselves — inside or outside of family and friends? Jesus calls us to see each other in a new paradigm, as our brothers and sisters through our Father, and bring them into the body of Christ. We need to recognize and encounter that divine spark in each of us and find ways to reach that in caritas rather than stick to our comfort zones and divisions. A prophet may be without honor in his own home town, but we are all pilgrims on the road to salvation. Let us honor each other as we go.

Again, my apologies for the brief nature of this week’s reflections, but feel free to share your own insights in the comment section.