Daily Gospel Reflection
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September 4, 2023
Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up,
and went according to his custom
into the synagogue on the sabbath day.
He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
Rolling up the scroll,
he handed it back to the attendant and sat down,
and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him.
He said to them,
“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
And all spoke highly of him
and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.
They also asked, “Is this not the son of Joseph?”
He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb,
‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say, ‘Do here in your native place
the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.'”
And he said,
“Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.
Indeed, I tell you,
there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah
when the sky was closed for three and a half years
and a severe famine spread over the entire land.
It was to none of these that Elijah was sent,
but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.
Again, there were many lepers in Israel
during the time of Elisha the prophet;
yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
When the people in the synagogue heard this,
they were all filled with fury.
They rose up, drove him out of the town,
and led him to the brow of the hill
on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong.
But he passed through the midst of them and went away.
Reflection
For years, I have had the privilege to work with the ACE program at Notre Dame. In this program, recent college graduates earn a Master’s Degree at no financial cost. In exchange, they study hard, student-teach, and receive faculty feedback in their first summer. Then, that same fall, they head to their community assignments, where they live with other ACE teachers and teach in schools far away from their hometowns.
Many of the Catholic schools where ACE teachers serve are under-resourced in a financial sense, but often not in terms of joy and community spirit. The ACE teachers being there helps alleviate the lack of teachers and often provides a welcome infusion of eager spirit into the schools.
These teachers serve the church, help young people, and learn a great deal by seeing first-hand how schools and communities function differently from the schools they may have attended. They quickly realize there is no one-size-fits-all education model—they must meet their students where they are.
In today’s gospel, Jesus notes that, like Elijah, a teacher in their hometown might be hurled “headlong” (that’s FACE FIRST!) down a cliff for speaking the truth in their own communities. As one of a few faculty at Notre Dame who grew up in South Bend, I’m familiar with Jesus’ wisdom and the wisdom embraced by the ACE program to send their students out afar to learn from other cultures and communities how to teach in new ways and then to bring back their experience and learning from those communities to a person’s hometown.
So, as the school year gets under the way for students grades pre-K–20 (13-20 being university), I hope all those who receive this message have the opportunity to pray for teachers that they are wise enough to learn from and with their students and for students to know that their teachers are working very hard for the benefit of students, schools, and of our larger communities to be the voices we need to hear today.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, we know that your rejection by your neighbors at Nazareth is the first whisper leading to the Cross. Help us to see you not just where we expect to, but to see you revealed in the most unlikely places and in the most unlikely people. We make this prayer in your name. Amen.
Saint of the Day
The best information we have of St. Rosalia’s life comes from the evidence we have of the medieval Church’s devotion to her. Churches that are dedicated to her, inscriptions, and paintings reveal details of her life.
She was born in Sicily around 1130 to a family of nobles; she is said to be a descendant of Charlemagne.
While she was still young, she felt a call to dedicate her life to God. She left home to seek holiness in solitude and went to live in a cave near her parent’s home and spent the rest of her life in it. She lived her whole life apart from the world, consumed in prayer, and died alone and forgotten.
Five hundred years later, as a plague was troubling the nearby city of Palermo, she appeared in a vision to a victim and led him to the cave where she died. Her bones were discovered, and inscribed on the wall were these words: “I, Rosalia, daughter of Sinibald, Lord of Roses, and Quisquina, have taken the resolution to live in this cave for the love of my Lord, Jesus Christ.” Also found were a clay crucifix, a Greek cross of silver, and a string of beads (an early form of the Rosary).
Her relics were carried in procession through Palermo. Three days later the plague ended, her intercession was credited as having saved the city, and she was declared its patron.
Relics of St. Rosalia rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica, and her image is used here with permission from Catholic.org.
St. Rosalia, who gave her life to prayer and saved a city, pray for us!