The very second, the very moment that we get it in our heads no matter who we are that the Gospel lesson or admonition applies more to someone else than it does to us – is the very moment we become the indignant hometown crowd member Jesus speaks to in today’s Gospel.  Obviously, at this moment we must confess that we don’t wish to be that person and then let the grace given to us and the virtue of humility to grow in our hearts.  Every Gospel lesson applies to each of us and we must accept that it does (by faith and trust in the Lord) even if we cannot for the moment see the way that it does.

Pride and entitlement cannot ever get in the way of our faith and our vocation.  They can and they easily do.  Speaking as a priest, I know that there are many ways I have those moments where I feel I can speak from authority on things and I have it together more than others do.  I have those prideful and entitled moments.  I have been humbled in my pride already many times in my life, and while it stings – it’s been the best thing for me.  It has helped me quickly get down off my own “high horse” and realize that I need to hear the Gospel as much if not more than anyone else.  I also realize that any and all authority given to me by Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit through my ordination was not meant to think I am Jesus, but to do His work in the way He wants me to do, not in my own way.  As a humbled sinner, I speak to the men who discern with me about this and remind them of this too.  They are entering into a beautiful committed life with Christ, but they must also remember that they are entitled to nothing and they must be both ministers and recipients of the Good News.  This applies to all of us.  St. Peter and the rest of the Apostles as they founded the Church in Jesus Christ may have been given abundant graces for that purpose; but they also needed to be recipients of the Word until the ends of their earthly journey; same as all the saints, same as everyone else.

Let us remember this today and ask ourselves, are we journeymen with our Lord Jesus, or are we the hometown crowd who take credit for the works of the Lord as though they were our own?