Thomas O'Connor, the historian, in his study of the Boston Irish, claims that of all the cities in the world, and certainly in the New World, the city of Boston was the worst possible choice for migrating Irish in the 1800's and early 1900's. Boston: older among American cities, developed, cultured, refined, in a word, very civilized, and the people all of one kind, homogenized, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon. And they had a loathing for Catholics, and most of all, a loathing for Irish Catholics. The Irish ultimately overwhelmed the city, but the experience made them unique among American Irish.

Jesus could have done better, humanly speaking, than choosing to be brought up in Galilee. The people there were poorly thought of in the rest of Israel. They had too much foreign blood in them. It was said, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"  Or again, "Search the Scriptures: no prophet comes from Galilee."

And yet Isaiah spoke beautifully of Naphtali and Zabulon, the land west of the Jordon, Galilee of the Gentiles. You sang it on the way in this morning:

The people that in darkness sat
A glorious light have seen.
The light has shone on them who long
in shades of death have been.

And one day He went to the synagogue. And when He went in they invited Him to speak a few words. So He went up front and He asked for the scroll of the book of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll, He found the place He was looking for, and He read to them:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me
Because He has anointed Me
To  preach Good News to the poor.
He sent Me to proclaim release to captives
And recovery of sight to the blind.
To set at liberty those who are oppressed,
And to proclaim the acceptable time of the Lord.

They were stunned. One would have thought it good news, something glad to hear. It wasn't so, though. And He knew that. What He said wasn't welcome. Indeed, He wasn't welcome. And the more He spoke, the more obvious it became, and the worse things got.

He gently referred to the fact that many of them were foreigners, or of foreign blood. Well, there was Naaman, and he was Syrian. And he was a leper and the prophet healed him. And there was the woman of Sarepta, and the prophet helped her in her poverty.

But that wasn't so much the issue. It was deeper than that. It would have been better if He had not spoken at all, or if He did speak, not to speak on that text. He couldn't have done worse, in a sense. And not only that, He went on to annoy them further by implying that even in Israel, quite apart from foreigners, He was not welcome. And in the end, He barely escaped with His life.

Well, if you're aware of your own heart and are observant, this won't seem too strange. The fruit of quiet, of living apart, of going apart, experiencing quiet once in a while, can be revealing. Or like sometimes in the middle of the night you wake up and you have a clear insight into something.

Resentment in the presence of good is not perhaps illogical for one who feels that he has not been too  favored by man or God. In other words, poor people can hardly be blamed if they're jealous of the rich: whether it be wealth in intelligence, in looks, in competence, in money, in breeding, in charm — whatever. It's no fun to be poor. And to stand in your poverty in the presence of obvious wealth.

Sinners often respond negatively to virtue. Goodness is not universally loved. Even little children not too far along in life will reveal jealousy, envy, spite. The sweetest little thing will manifest another dimension.

As adults, with a little practice we learn to control our responses. Most of us are full of foibles,  blemished, and marred. Human virtue is, after all, rather limited. And so it's easy to justify ourselves. And when we are pointed out as someone who's been extremely patient in a very trying situation, I'm not unwilling to say: "That may be. But I've known him on days when he wasn't so patient." Or someone is extremely generous in a situation: "That may be. I can remember a day when he was very stingy to me." And so we are capable of cutting [someone] down. And if the present pope is a saint, and probably is: "There have been popes in the past who were a disgrace to the Church.".

What ruins all this, though, is Christ Himself: totally good, totally rejected. Not merely driven out of His land as a child, driven out of His town as an adult, but all His life haunted, hunted, hated. And in the end, at thirty-three,  done to death with a viciousness that is appalling. Even a common criminal hanging next to Him on a cross, said to his companion: "And what has this Man done?"

Here is mystery, worth pondering. Nothing will bring out the evil in us as fast and as effectively as the presence of good. One reason, I suppose, we don't find God a comfortable presence. Is it safe to be intimate with pure Goodness?

And yet to live in quiet and to know the human heart and the human landscape is important. Because the temptation is to turn our back on this heart and on this landscape, and to betray the faith. That  must be resisted. Not by wills of steel, not by self-assertion, not by masterful determination. No. You keep your eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ. He heals us or we are not healed. He saves us or we are not saved. And it is in gazing on us that He warms us, makes us tender, drives from us the fear that makes us so taut, so tight. The gentleness of His look frees us from tension and rigidity born of doubt and of fear. And it is His mercy then that makes us merciful, and empowers us to love good wherever we find it. And in loving good, find God, and so fulfill the Scriptures.

So then, it's not the place that matters. It was not that Boston was an unlikely place for the Irish immigrant. Or Galilee an unlikely place for the Christ to grow up in. It's the heart that's the unlikely place. And the heart must become a place where Christ is welcomed and embraced. Your heart. Amen.

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