A city ought to facilitate an environment where its citizens can know, love, and serve God. In our own hometowns, each of us has a role in the group project of shaping, animating, and giving our home city its collective character and soul. In this process, we hopefully work out our salvation along with our neighbors—a diverse group of saints and sinners, rich and poor, powerful and weak.

Because the city is a group project, Jesus’ reproaches for Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum fall on the collective. The people in these cities had created an atmosphere that hardened hearts—they were unwilling to recognize the divine work Jesus was doing among them and change their ways.

Today, Jesus continues to visit our towns and cities. Not only does he wait for us to recognize and worship him in the Tabernacle and in the Eucharist, but also in the least among us—the poor and needy, the sick and the lame, the imprisoned, the hungry, the immigrant, and the refugee. When Jesus visits our cities in these forms, what kind of reception does he find? Are there open doors and houses of hospitality? Or does he find us unrepentant, not wanting to be inconvenienced by such close proximity to what would surely be uncomfortable encounters? Based on this reception, how would Jesus judge our own towns and cities?

When we speak of cities, we often feel small, like we can’t make a difference. Yet, in the case of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, I believe that if Jesus had found faith in one person the size of a mustard seed, it would have been enough to save these towns from his condemnation.

Indeed, Jesus encountered small acts of faith that made all the difference in other towns. A simple innkeeper with no vacant rooms offered a young couple with child his stable in Bethlehem. Veronica wiped Jesus’ face on the road to Calvary in Jerusalem. A young boy offered his lunch of five loaves and two fishes to Jesus with which he fed a multitude of people. These small acts of faith were done to know, love, and serve Jesus, and they echoed in eternity—they transformed these ordinary places into holy sites forever.

So too, why not us in these places we call home?