An Extraordinary Gift

Wade Burton tells about a man who was riding a bus from Chicago to Miami. He had a stop-over in Atlanta. While he was sitting at a lunch counter, a woman came out of the ladies' rest room carrying a tiny baby. She asked the man, "Will you hold my baby for me; I left my purse in the rest room." He did. But as the woman neared the front door of the bus station, she darted out into the crowded street and was immediately lost in the crowd. The man couldn't believe his eyes. He rushed to the door to call the woman, but could not see her. What should he do? Put the baby down and run? When calmness settled in he went to the Traveler's Aid booth and they soon found the real mother. The woman who had left him holding the baby was not the baby's mother. She had taken the child, perhaps to satisfy a motherly urge to hold a child. The man breathed a sigh of relief when the real mother was found. After all, what was he to do with a baby? In a way each of us is in the same situation as this gentleman. We are left with the question, "What will we do with the baby?" …We have been given an extraordinary gift. It is the gift of faith. Jesus comes before His family and friends at Nazareth in today’s Gospel reading. They know Him. They have grown up with Him. They have a sense of His identity. And there is an anticipation of what He might say to them. Their gaze is intent upon Him and their faces show a longing to hear what He has to say to them. But how fickle we are as human beings! What begins with a sense of excitement and hopefulness ends in discord and frustration. We will hear in next week’s gospel, their eagerness turns to anger and threats. This is the Year of Faith, a time where we renew this gift of belief in our God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Have we been disappointed with our God? Have we been angry and upset with our God? Have we threatened our God with disbelief? And if we reverse those questions on ourselves, what response would we discover there?

Msgr. Mike