In today’s readings, we are invited to take a look at new facets and gifts in ordinary life situations and in our fellow human beings. In the first reading, we experience the human tendency to underrate the ordinary through the story of Naaman, an army general of the king of Syria. He was a valiant and honourable man, through whom God gave deliverance to Syria. However, he was a leper. He was told to go and wash seven times in the Jordan in order to be clean from his Leprosy. But he asked why of all the waters in the world, it should be the Jordan in Israel that he would need to wash for cleansing. He believed that the waters in Damascus can clean him better than all the waters in Israel.
In the Gospel, Jesus used a “disturbing” expression: “A prophet has no honour in his place.” Jesus, filled with the Holy spirit, went to his homeland of Nazareth and preached the word of God on a Sabbath in the Synagogue of his upbringing. He preached with conviction and people were impressed by his teachings that they started to question if he was not the son of the carpenter. His teaching, though filled with wisdom and the spirit of God, was ignored and rejected in his homeland because of their familiarity with him.
As human beings, we have the tendency to discount people we know very well and on what we are used to. For various reasons, these ordinary things, people or events do not catch our eyes or our attention. The question is: Why is that so? Could it be what an anonymous author in Sacred Space described as the drawer tendency: “We love our drawers? Everything is so beautifully clear with them. One look – I know you! – sorted. There is little room for new things, especially not for surprises or the impossible”[i]
Such stiffness comes about when we evaluate or judge people and situations by our own standards. It is also perhaps an issue of pride or the inability to make room for others in our lives. Most often pride leads us to reject what is ordinary while forgetting that God also works through the ordinary things and normal people. We often lack the ‘inner eye’ to see the hand of God in the ordinary people and the ordinary things in life—those things that make life beautiful and extraordinary. The beatitude in Matt 5:5 says: the meek are blessed for they shall inherit the earth. Humility and simplicity enable us to accept the circumstances of life the way they present themselves; great or small. It enables us to mingle with people of every class, race or colour. Through humility we are in touch with earth’s gifts, God’s blessings and surprises.
The period of Lent offers us great opportunity to gaze inward and let God into our lives. I should ask myself whether I have the tendency to reject people and if I am closed up to surprises of everyday life and God’s miracles in ordinary things of life simply because they are present through things or people that are familiar to me or below my standards. Have I, like Jesus, experienced rejection in my place of work, or in my home or among friends? Perhaps, I can acknowledge these feelings and look at them in prayer.
I wish to end this reflection with a prayer:
“Merciful God, we so often limit each other by leaning on our preconceived notions. But you have so wonderfully created and generously gifted us all. Help us to keep discovering, accepting and appreciating this in ourselves and in others.” (culled from Sacred Space: Mein tägliches Online-Gebet)
[Readings: 2 Kgs 5:1-15a; Lk 4:24-30]
[i] https://de.sacredspace.ie/node/186336
