Rather than to Israel, Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel could easily refer to the Church. This is an unpleasant possibility, is it not? It was certainly unpleasant for those in the synagogue of Jesus’ hometown.
Too often it is lost on us how unassuming Jesus seemed to most people. Our Gospel yesterday clearly showed that apart from being a Jewish man talking to a Samaritan woman, He did not seem particularly noteworthy as He sat by Jacob's well.
It would be difficult to think of how unassuming the Lord would’ve seemed to the people of His native place, many of whom were no doubt His relatives. Knowing someone, encountering them often, speaking with them, observing them closely tends to remove their mystique. There is a lot of truth in the saying, familiarity breeds contempt. At the very least, it often breeds indifference.
This observation, of course, serves the theological point that Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man. Yes, He is consubstantial with the Father, true God from true God, but, through the womb of the Blessed Virgin, He is also consubstantial with us, truly human.
What tended to set Jesus apart are the seemingly outrageous things He said. To the Samaritan woman at the well, He said directly that He is the Christos, the Christ, the Messiah, the One for whom she was waiting to tell her everything.1
What caused the kerfuffle in today’s Gospel is Jesus of Nazareth proclaiming to His fellow townspeople the same thing, namely that He is the Messiah. He did this by reading a passage from Isaiah about the Messianic age and then giving a very short homily: “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”2 This prompted someone to say, “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?”3
Over two millennia, the Church has had many unassuming prophets: the deacon, Francis of Assisi, to name perhaps the most popular and radical one. Closer to our own day, Dorothy Day, Daniel Berrigan, and Madeline Delbrêl. In the mode of Pope John Paul II, we might even recognize the Protestant, Dietrich Bohoeffer and Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jew.
In his Angelus address yesterday, Pope Leo quoted Hillesum. Talking about the thirst, the desire, that constitutes our humanity at its deepest level, the Holy Father, cited Hillesum’s diary, where she wrote about sometimes drawing near to God before admitting “more often stones and grit block the well, and God is buried beneath. Then he must be dug out again.”4
Our Lenten project each year is dig God out again. It is to prepare ourselves to renew our baptismal promises at Easter. When taken rightly, this is no sentimental journey. The question before us, especially now when so many terrible things are happening with some trying to be covered with a Christian veneer, is Do I really want to be like Christ? Have I decided to really be like Him?
One’s answer is revealed by whether one takes stock of oneself to identify those things that need to change for such a transformation to occur. Do I practice the disciplines of Christ as an apprentice would to master anything else? Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving aren’t just for Lent.
A Christian is one who, far from being put off by them, believes Jesus’ outrageous claims. A Christian believes He is the Lord, not a liar or a lunatic. But what is the point of believing Jesus is Lord if you don’t commit yourself to living, even now, in God’s kingdom, seeking to make it a present reality?
Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino insisted, “Forgetting the poor has gone hand in hand with forgetting the Kingdom of God.” Referring to the Church’s early conciliar history, which coincided with the Church being accommodated (some insist co-opted) by the empire, Sobrino asserted: “By the time of the fourth-century conciliar debates it is clear that the Kingdom of God plays no role whatsoever in Christology.”5
This is why being a disciple is so very important in every age. Following Christ shows that His humanity matters as much as His divinity, not more and not less. Being truly human means being like Jesus.6 Being His disciple means endeavoring, as scripture enjoins, “to live [just] as he lived.”7
1 See John 4:25-26.↩
2 See Luke 4:16-19.21.↩
3 See Luke 4:22.↩
4 Pope Leo XIV. Angelus Address, 8 March 2026↩
6 Jon Sobrino. “The Kingdom of God and the Theological Dimension of the Poor,” in Who Do You Say That I Am?: Confessing the Mystery of Christ, Ed. John C. Cavadini and Laura Holt, 109-145.↩
6 Second Vatican Council. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World [Gaudium et spes], sec. 22. 1 John 2:5-6.↩
7 1 John 2:5-6.↩
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