As we hear about Jesus preaching in his native town, and as we hear about the calls that Paul and Ezekiel received from God, a lot questions came to my mind: (1) Are we able to see the presence of Christ in others? (2) Do we recognize the way God speaks through his messengers? (3) Do we recognize the prophets of our own day?
In a lot of ways, we hear of rejection in our readings today. The people of Israel reject Ezekiel’s message as he speaks God’s words, rebelling against God and his message. Ezekiel preached the same general message as God’s other prophets in Ancient Israel: faithfulness to God’s word as revealed in Scripture; love of God and love of neighbor; and care for the needy and the poor. Yet, often, we need to get past our prejudices and self-centeredness to hear God’s message, which the people of Israel were unable to do.
In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul states that he is content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, and persecutions for the sake of Christ. Paul realizes that when he is weak, he is strong. In other words, when we embrace Christ’s Good News with all our strength and with all our being, we will suffer and be aware of our weaknesses. Paul realizes that the more we embrace Christ, the more our words and actions will speak about God and his love.
Ultimately, it does not matter to the prophet if his message is rejected or not. What matters most is that Ezekiel, Paul, and Jesus are speaking the word of God. But, too often, we reject God’s word because we don’t want to recognize that he is speaking to us in the ordinary moments of life.
When I was studying to be a lay missionary in the 1990s, I found an old tattered book written in 1939 that called out to me; it was entitled Sorrow Built a Bridge. This book told the story of Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, of how she responded to God’s presence in her life and how God called her to the Catholic faith. Rose was born in Massachusetts in 1851, the daughter of the famous American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote the book The Scarlet Letter, about the Puritans in colonial America that many of us read in high school or college. Rose grew up in a very positive environment, but perhaps it could have been more loving and nurturing. By the time she was 20 and had married George Lathrop, a writer for the Atlantic magazine, both her parents had died. After 5 years of marriage, her son was born, but he died at the age of 5 from diphtheria. This brought great sorrow into her life. Ten years after her son’s death, Rose and her husband entered the Catholic Church. Yet, Rose’s marriage was not a happy one as her husband struggled with alcoholism. Through the consent of her confessor, Rose separated from her husband. She saw God calling her to become trained as a nurse and to work with cancer patients in New York City. This was the late 19th century, a time when cancer patients were shunned and looked down upon, similar to AIDS patients in the early days of that disease. After her husband’s death in 1898, Rose became a consecrated religious sister, establishing the Dominican Congregation of St. Rose of Lima, also known as the Servants of Relief for Incurable Cancer. Rose took the name Mother Mary Alphonsa, She and her congregation established a center for cancer patients in Hawthorne, New York. Father Gabriel O'Donnell, the Dominican priest who is the postulator for her cause for sainthood, states that service to Christ's poor did not mean that as a woman of culture and social status, that she would just give out of her abundance and not go beyond the surface. On the contrary, Rose lived among the cancer patients, establishing a place where they could live in dignity and safety to face their final days on earth. She did not feel divided from them by class. She and her sisters saw themselves as servants. The residents were given very loving care. Out of the daily reality of her life, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop saw God’s presence, she heard his call, and she responded to God out of that reality. She could have felt rejected and angry, she herself could have rejected God, but in her sorrow and her struggles, she converted to Catholicism and she heard God’s call to serve him and to serve others.
Some of us here may be going through a joyful and happy period of life. Some of us may be feeling rejection, difficulty, and struggle. Some of us may be very dismayed at what we see going on in the world. Some of us may be very unsure of what tomorrow will bring. No matter what is going on in our hearts, God is with us. His presence calls out to us. May we feel God calling us to faith today.
