Gospel of John, chapter 1:11

The saddest words, perhaps in the scriptures are those words in the first chapter of St. John’s gospel that Jesus “came unto His own, but His own did not receive Him.” How often we make the same mistake when someone offers to help us but we refuse to accept that help.

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 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. And he turned away and left. A few minutes later, phones were ringing in the rectory. It was the nuns. They said they were still waiting for the priest. You can imagine their astonishment and embarrassment when they learned that the priest came but they did not receive Him.

The nuns missed the celebration of the Eucharist, not because they were bad people, but because the priest that came to them did not live up to their expectations. The reality before them differed so much from their expectations and they did not seize the moment of their visitation. This is precisely the problem the Jews and Jesus’ kinsfolk had with Jesus.

You see, the people expected a different kind of Messiah. They were waiting, it seems, for spectacular events and supernatural manifestations in the sky when they would literally see the Anointed one of God coming down in the clouds. 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 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 can be the messengers that God, in His providence, has sent to us to prepare us for eternal life. They can be the ordinary instruments that God uses to lead us to Him.

Fr. Hugh Duffy