JESUS WENT TO HIS OWN TOWN
Mark 6: 1-6a
In my experience the hardest people to try and share my faith with are my own family, particularly my nephews and nieces. It can be very easy to preach to a church filled with strangers or to be with like-minded people at Youth 2000 retreats. Indeed one of the great values being a member of the Youth 2000 family is to be part of a faith-based community. It is very important in this secular age to be in the company of believing Christians. Every human being needs community and this is strengthened when our faith is the basis for our community.
Our Christian faith teaches us that God Himself, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is a communion of love. In baptism you and I have been made members of this communion through faith. As we grow in our Christian faith we come to realise all the more deeply that we are immersed in this communion of love. I am not simply loved as myself but I am loved in the midst of the love of the Most Blessed Trinity. When the Heavenly Father sees Jesus and loves him he, in some extraordinary way, also sees me since I have been baptized into Christ. As Jesus teaches us in St. John’s Gospel, “As the Father loves me, so I have loved you”. It is from within the communion of the Blessed Trinity that we are loved. This is our true home, the heart of God himself.
It is this love that we try to witness to in our families and among our friends. But sometimes they just don’t get it and they think we are over-religious or weird. To feel rejected by one’s family and friends is a terrible cross at times. However being grounded in the truth of faith we continue to give quiet witness to our faith in the hope that someday and in some way they too will come to realise the truth of how God has made a home for them also in his heart and invites them through faith to this true home of heavenly love.
In the meantime continue on your faith journey. Continue, supported by your friends in Youth 2000 and other faith-based communities to deepen your openness to God’s love for you and in this way build up the Church and through the power of the Holy Spirit let your family and friends also be touched by the power of this love.
Fr John Harris, OP