Our life long journey is to discover more and more the beauty of this God that we worship in Jesus Christ – to come to know him better and better as we spend time with him in prayer as we delve deeper into the scriptures and into God's salvific plan that in sending his own son, God from God, light from light Who came to us 2000 years ago.
The people in today's gospel are astounded and at Jesus's preaching. His tone, his declaration that “today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” What Scripture passage? the Scripture passage from the prophet Isaiah, which would be read by the Messiah.
“The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”
And rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down and everyone's eyes were fixated on him.
And he said to them, “today, this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” They all spoke highly of him. They were amazed at his gracious words. And they asked, “is this not the son of Joseph?”
And so, my brothers and sisters. They took offense at him because his tone was as if one sent from God, and was too much for their pride to accept.
How about us? Have we accepted the Lord and his good news? The beautiful news that he came to give us, that life does not end here in this world that we were meant to live on forever to be with him forever in heaven?
And in today's reading from Saint Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians, he tells us to be aware that we do not grieve like the rest of humanity when they lose a loved one. Why? “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep.” In other words, we have to mourn, yes, when we lose a loved one, but not like the pagans, like the non-believers and my brothers and sisters so many times when I do a memorial mass, you know, when people come to the mass and I see a lot of sad faces and for sure, you know, because we miss our loved one.
But sometimes those sad faces are born out of a lack of faith – people who come to the mass out of respect for the family, but who don't really believe, don't believe in God and do not appreciate what God has done for us in sending Jesus! And so their demeanor is so sad and without hope.
My brothers and sisters, the body goes back into the ground. The spirit goes back to God, and our Lord Jesus Christ promised that even the body he will raise up on the last day.
Let us believe and be convinced that God loves us, and because he loves us, He wants us to be with him forever. We open our eyes on the other side and then we will know.
How often we have been unappreciative, ungrateful for all the blessings and the good things our Lord Jesus has won for us. And God bless you.
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