"Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience," (Col 3:12)

Lk 4:16-30

Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, "Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing. "And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They also asked, "Is this not the son of Joseph? "He said to them, "Surely you will quote me this proverb, 'Physician, cure yourself,' and say, 'Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum. '"And he said,"Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian. "When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them and went away.

It is easy to stop at the surface of the Word of God. We are delighted with its beauty, we listen to it with delight, we respect the Holy Scriptures, which, after all, are the words of God. In this word, God reveals himself, to us to change our hearts. Every day God whispers His words to my ears in hope that I will begin to listen to Him and put into practice what He says to me. Jesus came to Nazareth with the same mission and the same word with which he spoke to others. He did not come to show off his eloquence and rhetoric, but to explain God's truth to people. At the beginning everything seemed to be going well, the inhabitants of Nazareth listened in amazement, but from amazement they turned into doubt and finally into resistance that led to fury against the Son of God. What happened to these people? They were touched by the truth that Jesus had told them, the painful truth about the condition of their souls, far beyond God's

pleasure. I wonder why we, who hear the Word of God every day, so easily then turn against Jesus in our hearts, refusing His grace? After all, we are delighted with His Word, we read it in the Bible, maybe we go to the Bible Study Group? Maybe we are just listening to Jesus, when He wants something more, He wants us to trust Him and follow Him. We know from the Gospels that many crowds followed Jesus, but no one speaks of the people of Nazareth between them. And yet they knew Jesus best, they experienced His grace and presence the most, after all, he lived among them for thirty years of his life. Can you be closest to Jesus and not have any relationship with Him at the same time? This can and happens most often in the lives of us believers, who have our faith implanted in us from baptism. However, implanted does not mean developed. Faith, as we hear in Romans 10, is born of hearing: Therefore faith is born of what is heard, and what is heard is the word of Christ. The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart. But it is a word of faith that we preach. So if you confess with your mouth that JESUS IS LORD and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Because faith accepted with the heart leads to justification, and confessing it with the mouth - to salvation. We can see that faith does not stop with listening. Listening is to lead to the acceptance of faith and finally to bear witness to it in our life. Listening is the first step to opening the way to action, to concrete actions, to a change of heart, and to witness this faith to others. St. James says: Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. Self-deception is the contradiction between faith and life, a faith based on the Word of God that is heard and not fulfilled. Such listening is a waste of time for me and for Jesus who sacrifices Himself for me. Jesus does not need my approval and admiration for His wisdom, but a conversion and improvement in life. For faith is not about getting excited about Jesus' wisdom, His power, but about using that wisdom and power in your daily life to become a better person. If I don't use them, my faith becomes dishonest and hypocritical because I say I'm a Christian, but I don't really have anything to do with God, I'm just a fan of Him and not relative.

Father Marcin Cwierz, OSPPE

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"Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience," (Col 3:12)