Homily: July 31, 2026, Friday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time (Rejection)

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 “Where did this man get all this?” And they took offense at him.

The people who listened to Jesus were astonished at His wisdom, they knew that such words had to come from God but instead of praising God for it, they took offense at Jesus for preaching it. Their narrow mindedness refused to accept that a carpenter’s son could deliver God’s speech.

They rejected His wisdom, and they rejected Him. In reality, they had rejected God.

Their pridefulness and severe lack of faith prevented them from acknowledging what God was doing in their midst. God came amongst them, to be with them, but they did not want God to come to them that way. They had their own idea of how God should be presented to them and had their own expectations of how the Messiah should speak and act.

The same happened to Jeremiah. He preached and warned the people about the consequences of the their sins, but instead of paying attention and recognizing their faults, they questioned and condemned him, “You must be put to death! Why do you prophesy in the name of the LORD?”

Our responsorial psalm today is, “Lord, in your great love, answer me.” We ask God to answer us, and truly, God wants to answer us. In fact, God is always speaking to us. But perhaps He has been speaking to us in ways we never expected. Perhaps He speaks through people whom we would never expect to be His messengers. And so we did not hear, we might have missed so many of His messages due to our pridefulness and hardness of heart.

If we are humble enough to listen and open enough to recognize his presence, we would hear Him and feel Him. 

Fulton Sheen said, “The Lord hears us more readily than we suspect; it is our listening to God that needs to be improved.”

So let us be spiritually mindful, attentive to the Spirit and listen without judgement. God may speak through an ordinary person, an unexpected situation. The wisdom of God might come in the form of a word of correction, or even through someone we find difficult to accept. Let not our personal discriminations or pre-conceived ideas constrain God’s profoundness into our own petty limitations.

The people of Nazareth missed the Messiah because they thought they already knew the person of Jesus. Let us not make the same mistake.

When God speaks, may we have the humility and openness to accept His message, and allow Him to change our hearts, even when it is delivered in the most unexpected way, through the least expected people.

Amen.


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