By Colleen O’Sullivan
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. (Matthew 13:54-58)
Piety
When we disclose something of ourselves to another
in trust and love, we are sharing in God's revelation to the beloved Son. When we listen with loving attention to
another who speaks of what is deepest in life, we understand a little more the
Son's listening attention to Abba." (from Orientations,
John Veltri, SJ)
Study
In the long run, not many
of us are who we seem to be at a first glance.
People make assumptions about us based on initial impressions. And sometimes they never take time for a second,
deeper look. Jesus knew what that was
like. He came from Nazareth, a village without
distinction if we go by the remark in John’s Gospel, “Can anything good come
from Nazareth?” (John 1:46) Maybe the
villagers themselves felt downtrodden, as though they really did live on the
wrong side of the tracks. In today’s
Gospel, along comes one of their own, preaching and teaching with wisdom and
authority. Maybe they’re jealous, but
they see Jesus as getting above himself and being pretentious. Who does he think he is? His father was only a carpenter and his
mother just one of the many Mary’s living there. What makes him think he’s so special? They truly had no idea who it was who decided
to just travel on to more fertile ground.
They never gave him a second thought.
As I thought about St.
Ignatius, I wondered what his sister-in-law thought about him when she had to
take care of the wounded 26-year-old Inigo, as he was known then. (She and her husband lived in the Loyola
family home.) She knew all about him;
how, lacking any hope of inheriting land, he had been sent to serve as a page
at another nobleman’s court and how he had gone on to become a soldier. She
knew about his reputation as a ladies’ man.
Hit in the leg with a cannon ball during a battle in Pamplona and
carried home to rest and recover, he displayed his vanity about his appearance when
he insisted on having his poorly set leg re-broken and operated on again. Bored with staying in bed, Inigo asked for a
novel of a popular genre, a knightly romance, but this was not a home given to
reading of such a frivolous nature.
Instead, he was given a life of Christ and a book on the lives of the
saints. I would imagine his brother’s
wife was not too impressed with him at this point.
No one would have imagined
that this restless, wounded man would go on to spend his life developing and
perfecting his well-known Spiritual Exercises or that people today would still
be using them to grow closer to Jesus.
They would have laughed at the idea that he would go on to found a
religious order or that a few centuries later there would be Jesuit schools all
over the world. Our assumptions about
others are often fairly limited in scope.
But God sees what we can be, and God stepped in at this point and
rechanneled the zeal of Inigo, who was beginning to realize that he found more
satisfaction in thinking about doing great things for God than in all his
daydreams about pretty girls.
What I especially like about
St. Ignatius is his humanity. He wasn’t
perfect; he made mistakes and took some wrong turns in his attempts to serve
God, but he owned up to them and learned from them. Serving God was what really mattered to him,
so much so that he could send one of his closest friends far away as a
missionary, knowing they would likely never see each other again. He was willing to spend many years doing
administrative and desk work, which weren’t his favorite pastimes, for the good
of the order. And one could never
underestimate the power or genius of St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises.
Action
When have you allowed your
assumptions about someone to limit your appreciation of the totality of his or
her gifts and graces? When have you felt
that someone made a quick judgment about you and didn’t see you for who you
really are? Pray for the ability to
listen to others as Jesus listened to his Father, to truly know the other.
No comments:
Post a Comment