“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Gospel of Luke 12 : 34

Acceptance is a rare attitude today. We tend to be fixated on what the future can bring, and how to prepare for it, that we forget that acceptance of the present moment holds treasures in abundance that can be enjoyed right now, in this place and at this time.

There is a story about a priest who fell suddenly ill and asked a visiting African priest to help him out by saying mass at a convent. The African priest showed up at the convent and rang the doorbell. He was dressed in casual clothes and not in a clerical outfit. A nun quickly answered the door thinking that their priest had arrived to say mass. She was taken aback when she saw the African face. Without giving the priest a chance to say anything, she quickly dismissed him thinking that he came for a hand-out. “Sorry we cannot help you,” said the nun. “We are having Mass now. Come back some other time.” “Thank you, Sister!” said the priest. He turned away and left. A few minutes later, phones were ringing in the priest’s rectory. It was the nuns calling. They said they were still waiting for the priest.

You can imagine the embarrassment of the nuns when they learned that the priest came but they did not receive or recognize him.The nuns missed the celebration of the Eucharist, not because they were bad people, but because the reality before them differed so much from their expectations that they did not seize the moment of their visitation.

This is precisely the same problem Jesus’ kinsfolk had with Him. You see, the people expected a different kind of Messiah to the one before their very eyes. They were waiting, it seems, for spectacular events and supernatural manifestations in a distant future when they expected to see the Anointed one of God coming down in a cloud of glory. So when Jesus came to them as a simple carpenter showing them the way, the truth, and the life, they could not reconcile the reality before them with the expectations in their minds.

We need to think about the ways the Lord comes into our lives. We need to be open to the reality of those who offer us help, and not to turn them away as did Jesus’ own kinsfolk. The question is not whether God comes to us or not but whether we are able to recognize Him when He comes. Let us take a second look at those persons we only know too well — or at least we think we do — those people we often take for granted. These men, women and children, in our families and in our communities, can be the messengers that God, in His providence, has sent to us. Be grateful for the simple gifts they bring, and don’t turn them away.

They can be the ordinary instruments that God uses to lead us to Him.

Fr. Hugh Duffy