4° Sunday of Ordinary Time

In today's homily, the priest reminded us: our vocation is to seek to do the will of God in our lives. Yes, whether we are priests, religious or lay person, we seek to do His will everyday, even in little things. In today's gospel reading, Jesus was not being accepted by His own people. Often I wonder how He felt not being accepted and being rejected by the people whom He love most, especially those closest to Him.

In life, definitely we bound to be rejected or not being accepted by people, and the most painful experience is from those we love most. In these moments, everything may seem dark, nothing seems to be right, we feel alone and probably we even want to run away from where we are.

These days, I came across a number of readings and reflections that touch on this subject and give some lights to them. Just a few days ago, we were in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and one of the readings the Church offered include:

• St. Paul's letter to the Romans--who/what can separate us from the love of Christ?
  
• Psalm 22--Why remain far from me and do not help me? Why do you not hear my cry, O Lord?

• Jesus dying on the cross and the women and John there.

I thought the comment to the readings was good:

• There are moments in our life in which suffering goes beyond every measures, in which there are no words to express our pains, not even cries, tears or gestures. In those moments, we are also there with the women at the tomb, watching all that we loved and in which we hoped from the buried.

• The sufferings of God is redeeming. He is loaded with the sufferings of all the people and his death redeemed all of us. He was elevated on the cross to draw everyone to him. In his sufferings and solitude on the cross, he really shared and participated in the experience of most obsure pain and fear that humanity experience. The more we cling to the cross of Christ, the more we cling to one another. Christ offered his life for all, when we recognize that we depend in equal way from this salvific work, we discover that we are gifted with a profound unity.

Do we continue to love those whom we loved even though they rejected or abandoned us? Do we continue to trust?

Jesus did not stop loving his people even though he faced rejection and abandonment. I believe He loves them even more. It is difficult and I believe it takes time to reach this point where the wounds of hurt be transformed into deeper love. Yet, I believe that faith and trust in the will and love of God makes all things possible. It opens our eyes to new light and love.