Fr Paul reads from the Gospel of Mark (3: 20-21) in which such a crowd gathered around Jesus when he went home that he was unable to even eat and when Jesus’s family heard about this, they went to take charge of him.
Today we hear one of the shortest Gospels that we are ever likely to hear – two verses. Yet, Fr Paul says, we need to be aware that this, and the Gospels over the next two days, are telling us a story. Firstly, we hear in this Gospel that the people close to Jesus, his relatives, think that Jesus is out of his mind, that he is crazy, that he is mad. Then we will hear that he is rejected by the Scribes and then, lastly, Jesus states that he is closer to those who listen to him rather than those, like his relatives, who are close to him. So, says Fr Paul, we start to get a real sense of how isolated and misunderstood Jesus is. He is rejected by those who are close to him but accepted who are listening to him. With this in mind, Fr Paul asks us to reflect ‘How do I respond when rejection happens in my life? How do I respond when people misunderstand what I might have said or done?’
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