Fourth of July weekend is a perfect time to go home, to get together with family and friends, and to relax and get comfortable, now that summer if finally here.  Usually, there’s something very comfortable just about going home for the Fourth.  Maybe it’s your Mom’s potato salad and fried chicken.  Maybe it’s your Aunt Margaret’s apple pie.  Maybe it’s watching your Dad light sparklers with your kids, just like he did with you.  Or maybe it’s just sitting in the backyard where you played as a child, drinking an ice-cold lemonade with those you love.  The Fourth of July is awesome.  And it’s even greater when you get to go home and spend time with family and friends.  Maybe that’s one of the reasons why so many families schedule family reunions for this time of the year.  I love family reunions.  I know a lot of people don’t like them.  But I do.  I use family reunions to get ideas for future homilies.  It’s true.  I’ve yet to go to one of our family reunions where I didn’t get an idea for a homily or at least a good story to use in one.  Sometimes, I think that I could write a book after a family reunion.  Don’t you wish you had a priest in your family?

        Today in our Gospel, Jesus goes home to Nazareth.  The Gospel doesn’t tell us whether or not it was Fourth of July weekend, but it really doesn’t matter, because they didn’t have the Fourth of July in First-Century Palestine.  Anyways, Jesus gets home, and everybody’s there.  All his relatives and cousins and old classmates, everybody is there.  And by this time, Jesus had already made quite a name for Himself.  He had already calmed the sea and healed many people.  He was getting quite the reputation.  And He was becoming famous.  He gets to Nazareth and there’s this excitement, a buzz.  They must have had a great feast prepared, just like a family reunion.  On the Sabbath, Jesus goes to the synagogue to teach as He had done everywhere that they went.  But rather than being impressed by this “local boy makes good”, the good people of Nazareth are put off that Jesus is talking to them this way.  “Who does He think that He is?”  “Why does He think He’s so much better than we are?”  “Who does this Guy think that He is?  This is the carpenter’s son, for goodness sake!”  They are so busy putting Jesus in His place, to make themselves feel good, that they miss out on seeing and experiencing what so many around have already been able to see and experience: The Messiah, God come down to earth, to be with His people!  And so, the big question of the day was, “What was Jesus going to do for His hometown?”  He had done so much for others.  Surely He would do more for them.  And yet, as St. Mark points out, He didn’t perform any mighty deed there because of their lack of Faith.    In fact, St. Mark says, “He was amazed at their lack of Faith.”

        This is very much a sad story today.  What should have been a very happy encounter and occasion, quite obviously doesn’t end up that way.   I want to concentrate on that last line there, “He was amazed at their lack of Faith.”   Wouldn’t that be a terrible thing for Jesus to think about you?  I mean, there are many things that we would want Jesus to be amazed at about us.  We’d like for Him to amazed at our love, at our compassion, at our service, at our prayer, at our desire for holiness.  Wouldn’t it a sad and terrible thing that what amazed Jesus about us, was our lack of Faith?  What would Jesus say about your Faith?  Is it as strong as it should be?  Are you doing everything that you can to keep your Faith strong and to grow in it?  Is your Faith real, or it just nice words that you like to say when you’re in church or up here at St. Maria Goretti?  These are things that we need to think and pray about today as we hear this Gospel.

         The problem going on in our Gospel today is that these people are too familiar with the Jesus that they think that they know.  Do they really know Him?  No, they might be related to Him, they might have known Him as a child, they might have furniture in their house that He worked on or repaired for them.  But clearly, they don’t know Him.  Do we only think that we know Jesus?  Are so familiar with Him that we forget Who He really is?  It can happen to all of us as His people.  We have to become so very careful that we stay open to Jesus, and that we’re not trying to make Him into something that we want Him to be.  This is a hard Gospel to hear.  The good people of Nazareth are so close to Jesus, they know so much about Him, and yet that doesn’t help them when it comes to what is most important:  their Faith!

          Pay attention to this warning!  We must have Faith!  God has so much more in store for us than just what we imagine.  He’s got a family and a homecoming in store for us, that is bigger than we even dream of.

May God bless us on this Sunday, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…AMEN !!!

St. Maria Goretti… Pray for us !!