How arduous it is for Jesus' contemporaries to accept the messianic pretension in his words and deeds. They cannot believe that this man from Nazareth, the son of the carpenter, should be the Messiah. Jesus is too well known, too ordinary, too human. What they expected was a mighty leader, one on whose shoulders authority rests (cf. Isaiah 9:6), who would free his people from oppression and foreign rule. Jesus seemed unsuitable to fulfill these expectations. But while his parentage was too earthly, his appearance and behaviour was too heavenly. He scandalised with his teaching, his healings, his disciples and his self-reliant manner. This was even more than messianic. It was divine. And therefore, it was blasphemy. We can find in today's Gospel a foretelling of the Church's difficulties in defending Christ's perfect divinity and his perfect humanity. In the first centuries and throughout the ages we have been challenged to hold together both truths, that Christ is truly God and truly Human. If he were merely a good man and not God, how should we be redeemed? And if he were really God but not a man like us, how could his death bring us salvation? But it is the constant faith of the Church that he, the eternal Son of God the Father, became man "for us and for our salvation". The Christian faith stands and falls with it.
This is, of course, difficult to follow and impossible to understand fully. It can only be grasped in faith. Let us therefore in this season of Lent meditate on what God has done for us in Jesus. Let us consider that he whom we know to be from God is the Messiah, the Christ, the Saviour of the world.
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