Monday in the Third Week of Lent, March 24, 2025

Luke 4, 24-30

Jesus said to the people in the synagogue at Nazareth: “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place. Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them and went away.

In the Gospel Reading for today’s Mass we see the Lord Jesus on his only visit during his Public Life to his childhood home.  St. Luke gives much more detail to the event than Matthew and Mark do in order to show why the Lord made Capernaum his home base rather than Nazareth, a question which must have puzzled those to whom Luke was writing.  The way this episode is cut up in the lectionary, we do not see how the Lord entered the synagogue at Nazareth, read from the Prophet Isaiah, and was initially received favorably: “And all spoke well of him, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.”  But as the people in the synagogue continued to talk, they began to grow more critical.  “And they said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?” And he said to them, ‘Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, Physician, heal yourself; what we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here also in your own country.’ ”  From this point, we have the words for today’s reading.  The subsequent riot results not from the Lord’s teaching on Isaiah, but from the objection, “Is this not Joseph’s son?”  That is to say, Does he not belong to us?  The people wanted him to “do here also in your own country” all the wonderful things they had heard him doing first in Capernaum.  The Lord reminded them of the need for faith for the healings they demanded, and gave the examples of Naaman and the widow in the land of Sidon as examples of faith that even the Gentiles could possess.  But for his former neighbors and friends, it was too late.

The residents of Nazareth turned on the Lord because they saw him as preferring other towns to his home town.  It came down to pride,  and their pride was so outraged that they tried to throw Jesus over the side of the hill on which their town was built.  The Lord left them, then, and never returned.  For the next two to three years the countryside rang with his praises and stories of the wonders he had worked.  But Nazareth stood by as a mere spectator and had no share in his glory.