Incomprehensible

Homily for Saturday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

The word that came to mind as I was dwelling with the readings from this morning’s Mass is “incomprehensible.”

The first reading is, once again, a shortened form of chapter one of the Second Book of Samuel. What the lectionary does not tell us is that Saul had been mortally wounded in battle. However, he was still alive when the young man who brings the news to David happened upon him. Saul asked the young man to finish the job, to kill him so that he would not have to endure the pain of his wounds. The young man took Saul’s crown and the band around his arm and brought them to David. Upon questioning him further, David learns that this young man had killed Saul himself. He immediately orders one of his guards to kill the messenger. Not only is all of this killing incomprehensible to me, but the fact that it is actually part of God’s plan of salvation is also something that I find difficult to understand. The fact remains, David would never have become king unless both Saul and Jonathan had died.

The Gospel episode is also incomprehensible for me. I know that not everyone’s family is supportive, that some people have families which simply don’t get along very well. However, for Jesus’ relatives to maintain that he is out of his mind is just too much for me to understand. They obviously are afraid that Jesus will bring scandal upon the family through his actions. Scandal will bring shame, the one thing that every man or woman of that culture would want to avoid.

There are those who will maintain that Jesus’ divinity made it impossible for him to experience human emotions such as grief or being misunderstood. However, Jesus experienced his human life just as we experience ours – with its joys and with its sorrow. There is no human sorrow or problem with which Jesus cannot sympathize as a fellow human being. God has promised that we will never be completely abandoned. Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise.