THE WORD AND THE SAINT
Due to their lack of faith, Jesus did not work many mighty deeds among them, says the Gospel today. Someone might argue, “but if God could not do a miracle, be it for whatever reason, is it not a limitation or a weakness?" Let us pay attention, it is not God's weakness, but the strength that God has shared with us. What do we mean?
God created us in God's image and likeness and this likeness ensures that we are hardly different from God (Ps.8)! That makes us also persons with inviolable freedom, a freedom which not even God would take away. Though many resent it saying it is the cause of scores of evils in the world, it is that which makes us human, and gives us the dignity as the images of the Creator. Without the 'personal freedom' we would be no more than the animals.
Faith and Freedom have a great deal to do with each other. Faith is a response given in freedom, a total absolute freedom of the inner being of a person. Jesus in his freedom chooses to enter the synagogue to pray with his people and the people with their freedom choose to see only the apparent facts of Jesus, as the son of the carpenter and a son of their soil. They were not able to see the divine import of his actions, his words and the signs that he was accomplishing.
Just as we have in the saints, specially like those of Alphonsus de Ligouri whom we celebrate today, we have people who were ever prepared to recognise the Lord, that is the reason they did not miss the Lord or allow the Lord to pass by unnoticed! They become non just beholders of God, but ambassadors of God.