The readings of this weekend together give us a picture of the kind of people God wants us to be. The first reading talks about a strong person.

It reminds us that even before we were formed in the womb, God knew us and consecrated us and appointed us as prophets to the nations, to know and speak and live his word fearlessly in the world.

The second reading reminds us that nothing we do is of any worth unless we love. The Gospel focusses on the kind of strong and fearless love that sees where there is need and attends to that need even when it means stepping outside of our circle.

In this week’s Gospel, Jesus’s popularity rating drops to zero. And all because he made the Jews realise that God was not only for them but also for everyone. The Jews saw themselves as the Chosen People, as a people who had a very special relationship to God to the exclusion of all other peoples.

At some level, they felt that they had proprietary rights to God. However, Jesus shows them that this was not so. He reminds them that in Elijah’s day, when “a great famine raged through the land”, God sent his prophet not to anyone in Israel but to “a widow at Zarephath, a Sidonian town.”

And again “in the prophet’s Elisha’s time, there were many lepers in Israel, but none of these were cured, except the Syrian, Naaman.” In doing this, Jesus rejects the very narrow expectations that the Jews have of him.

Because he was one of them, they expect him to toe the line, but he breaks away. He further invites the Jews to be like him, to step out of their own narrow vision of God and of themselves so as to open themselves to a wider more inclusive vision of humanity and of God in the world.

They cannot do it. Instead they react with violence and anger: “They sprang to their feet and hustled him out of the town; ….intending to throw him down the cliff.”

There is nothing wrong in feeling special as long as we see everyone as special. The trouble starts when our “specialness” makes us feel superior to and set apart from others – the Chosen People, the Master Race.

 As Catholics, we often see ourselves as the “one true Church”to the exclusion of other religions. Like the Jews who saw themselves as the Chosen People of God, many times we see ourselves as superior.

We may also feel special because of our educational background, our social status, our income, where we live, who we are – our racial make-up. We begin to look down on others and treat them differently. We feel that they are not entitled to the same rights and privileges that we enjoy.

Throughout history, this kind of thinking has been the cause of great evil and violence. We remember the Holocaust and apartheid. Today the world continues to be riven by ethnic, social and religious tensions.

Trinidad is not immune to this. So this Gospel is a very important one for us. Jesus challenges us to open our eyes to the ways we feel that we alone are special and to free ourselves from the insidious trap of feeling that this specialness makes us superior to others.

He invites us to open our eyes to the beauty, specialness and value of all our people. Who or what situation is Jesus for us today?

Lord, we thank you today for people like Jesus, who shock us into realising how arrogant and selfish we have become, who point out to us all the people who are not of our group, but who have been blessed by God, people like the widow at Zarephath, a Sidonian town, and the Syrian, Naaman.

Often, these Jesus people are of our own group or family and we feel betrayed, saying: “This is Joseph’s son, surely?” But we are forced to see that we have set ourselves apart and above others. We realise that we have to stop looking down on others and ask your forgiveness for the times that we have excluded others.

We thank you for these moments of grace when you open our eyes more fully to your vision for our society and the world.
AMEN

Gospel Meditations for January are by Patricia Elie of Santa Rosa parish, Arima