The Lord Jesus presents himself as a prophet and, faced with the fatigue of his fellow countrymen to welcome the mystery of his person and to respond to the invitations of his mission, he does nothing but refer to the prophets who preceded him. The prophetic vocation – as we see in the first reading – is always linked to two words which are founding events in the life of the prophet: the call to life and the call to a specific mission. This journey concerns each of us who, according to the apostle’s teaching, are called to a growth in understanding that becomes growth in sensitivity: having become a man, I have eliminated what is as a child. The inhabitants of Nazareth find themselves in front of a Jesus who has become fully man in the sense of an awareness of his own gift e of one’s own mission which requires a relationship of comparison and conversion and this generates indignation which is a form of that war of which God speaks to Jeremiah. All this does not prevent the Lord from getting back and staying on the way. Therefore, it is never easy and absolutely never comfortable to come face to face with a word that lays bare our whole truth by asking us to recognize our need for salvation. For the inhabitants of Nazareth, for the relatives and neighbors of Jesus it is not easy to find themselves confronted in such a direct way with a word that requires a choice of field and an absolute involvement that does not look back, but allows itself to be projected towards the new. Marcel Proust noted: «The real voyage of discovery does not consist in seeking new lands, but in having new eyes».

Commentary by b. Michael David, osb Community of the Koinonia de la Visitation

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey