Daily Gospel Reflection – Wednesday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
February 1, 2023
Wednesday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Mk 6:1-6
Jesus departed from there and came to his native place, accompanied by his disciples.
When the sabbath came he began to teach in the synagogue,
and many who heard him were astonished.
They said, “Where did this man get all this?
What kind of wisdom has been given him?
What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands!
Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary,
and the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon?
And are not his sisters here with us?”
And they took offense at him.
Jesus said to them,
“A prophet is not without honor except in his native place
and among his own kin and in his own house.”
So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there,
apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them.
He was amazed at their lack of faith.
*United States Conference of Catholic
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus is rejected by the people of his own town. For as he says, “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place.” But he astounded crowds throughout Galilee because he taught with authority.
As far as we can determine, Jesus was not formally trained in a rabbinic school, nor was he educated to be a temple priest or a scribe, nor was he a devotee of the Pharisees, the Saduccees, or the Essenes. He was, if I can use a somewhat anachronistic term, a layman. And this made his arrival on the public scene all the more astounding.
For this Nazarene carpenter with no formal religious education or affiliation began to speak and act with an unprecedented authority. To the crowds who listened to him preach, he blithely declared, “You have heard it said, but I say . . .” He was referring, of course, to the Torah, the teaching of Moses, the court of final appeal to any faithful rabbi; and therefore, he was claiming for himself an authority greater than that of Israel’s most significant teacher and lawgiver.
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