Friday in the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time, August 4, 2023

Matthew 13:54-58

Jesus came to his native place and taught the people in their synagogue. They were astonished and said, “Where did this man get such wisdom and mighty deeds? Is he not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother named Mary and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? Are not his sisters all with us? Where did this man get all this?” And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and in his own house.” And he did not work many mighty deeds there because of their lack of faith.

St. Matthew summarizes the return of Jesus to his home town of Nazareth in five verses whereas St. Luke spends sixteen verses on this episode.  We might expect Matthew, an eyewitness, to provide more detail that Luke, who relied on the memories of others, but Matthew intends to make a point based on the Lord’s teaching that immediately precedes the account of his rejection st Nazareth: that of the treasure hid in the field and the pearl of great price.  This is in accord with Matthew’s method of showing the Lord’s teachings illustrated by his deeds.  Jesus himself is the treasure hid in the field, the pearl within the oyster in a large basket of oysters.  Nazareth is the field and the basket of oysters.  The only thing that distinguishes this otherwise ordinary field and ordinary basket of oysters is what they house: immense wealth and beauty.  Once the treasure is fully excavated and the pearl removed from the basket of oysters, they go are discarded while the treasure and pearl are admired and marveled at.  The treasure seeker probably sells the field cheap and the merchant probably leaves the basket of oysters where he round them.  Thus, all that raised the town of Nazareth to such significance as it had was its place in the Lord’s life.  Once he left it for good, it fell back into its obscurity without realizing the wealth that had passed from it.  The people of the town looked at the Treasure of the Ages and the Pearl of Great Price promised by the Prophets, and yawned.  

It is so necessary for us to grasp the Lord Jesus and hold him close to our hearts, listening closely to his words in the Gospel and studying them, while seeing the miracles that still fill our world by his hand.  They do not make the secular news media but any priest and virtually any hospital nurse, and many other people have seen them and known them for what they were.  His words are not historical artifacts but are directed to each of us now.  His deeds are public and are meant to be seen.  They are signs to us of his continued presence among us, and of how near the time is when he shall come in glory with the angels.  And we come before him in prayer so that we might grow in our personal experience of him.  This is most important.  In this way we feel his words within us and know him in the way the Apostles did.