Jesus encountered opposition and unpopularity in His own country. We see in today’s Gospel that the people in His home town of Nazareth would not accept Him, and that their lack of faith prevented Him from performing any great miracle there. He remarked, “A prophet is only despised in his own country, among his own relations and in his own house.” People of His home town were so enraged with Him and His teaching that they tried to throw Him over a cliff, but He faced them down and escaped. On the other hand, Jesus sometimes found great faith among people who were not of His own country or race or religion, such as the Samaritan leper whom He cured, or the Roman centurion of whom He said, “I tell you solemnly, nowhere in Israel have I found faith like this”; or again, the Canaanite woman whose daughter healed, telling her, “Woman, you have great faith.”
We might do well to keep some examples in mind in our attempts to proclaim the Gospel today. Many of us are glad to support the missions in faraway countries, but closer to home, if we attempt to spread the Gospel outside the doors of our churches at all, we tend to address our message to what we might call the fringes of our own church community: those who come to Mass at Christmas and Easter, those who send their children to our schools, those who have fallen away from the regular practice of the faith.