Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of Matthew (11: 20-24) in which Jesus reproaches the communities in which most of his miracles had been worked because they refused to repent, saying ‘Alas for you, Chorazin! Alas for you, Bethsaida!’.

Fr Paul says the failure of the Jews as a whole to respond to the Messiah was one of the sadnesses of the first early Christian generation.

This failure to respond is explained as the fulfilment of the prophetic statement in Isaiah 6:9, ‘They will look and look but not perceive, listen and listen but not hear.’

The tragic fulfilment of Jesus’ words here is starkly illustrated by the ruins of the villages of Chorazin and Bethsaida on the north coast of the Lake of Galilee. The former, a shamble of black basalt rocks, sits sadly on the hill above the Lake.

A ruin named Bethsaida lies, partially excavated, just on the other side of the Jordan, but has not yielded enough evidence even to justify a firm conclusion about its identity.

The most chilling judgment is reserved for Capernaum, in the quotations from Isaiah 14, hoping ‘to be raised high as heaven’ but in fact ‘flung down to hell’.

Mindful of the message in today’s Gospel, Fr Paul invites us to reflect… how do I respond to God?