Jesus laments for the unrepentant towns

In today’s Gospel from Matthew (11: 20-24) we hear Jesus lamenting over towns such as Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum.  He laments because he has worked many miracles in these towns, which the people have witnessed and yet still they fail to heed the message to repent; they still fail to understand that Jesus is the Messiah, the one who is to come.

This failure of the Jews to respond to Jesus, to the Messiah, is a sadness we can see in first generation Christians.  Fr Paul says it is interesting to note that Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum are all, today, just a set of ruins, and so what Jesus predicted as he agonised over them was fulfilled in the ensuing years.

With our Gospel in mind, Fr Paul asks that we might reflect in our own lives today ‘What have I failed to respond to in my life? What do I keep ignoring? What might I see and see again, like the people in the Gospel did, but choose to ignore or not accept?’

Today, he says, we might ask then for God’s grace to accept and to put in place a response.