The Rejection at Nazareth



SELECTED READING
The Rejection at Nazareth | Matthew 13:54-58

 PERSONAL REFLECTION
Rejection is painful, even more so if it is what comes out of exposing ourselves and allowing ourselves to become vulnerable in the hands of another. The months leading to my application and eventual acceptance to Arvisu House had seen me struggling with what could be the most painful rejection of all in relation to my vocation discernment journey. 

Someone told me that I should give up on this discernment because I am just too old for this. I had been told that I think too highly of myself to even consider that this will ever work; that I am not good enough to become a priest, much less to become a Jesuit. I had been told that this is the height of hypocrisy, that how I had been living my life is a glaring testament as to why I should never be accepted. As you could imagine, I was hurt by those words, but what’s more painful is that the words came from someone who knew me too well. Those words came from me. 

The past two weeks here in Arvisu had been filled with grace in that we were constantly bombarded with reminders that our self-awareness and criticalness of our own faults and limitations should not get in the way of seeing ourselves as unworthy of the vocation we are discerning about.

The Jesuits we have met so far — from the incoming novices, scholastics, to the priests — they might have used different words, but they all deliver the same message of encouragement: that we should work towards opening ourselves up to fully accept God’s love for us, and that this openness entails acknowledging our limitations and embracing them as an integral part of our offering and response to God’s love. 

In fact the reminders from them had been so constant that I am sometimes led to wonder if it’s not already being overdone. But then I am also reminded that I sometimes tend to forget too quickly, and that in my stubbornness and complacency, I might fall again into that trap of self-rejection and the downward spiral that comes with it — putting up that wall of insecurity that will separate me from God’s love. And then I come to terms and become even more grateful for the consistency of these reminders. 

And so as I close this reflection, I would like to beg for the grace that I, and also you my dear brothers, may not so easily forget that God loved us first, and that may we be guarded by the Holy Spirit against self-rejection and self-loathing as these restrain us from receiving His love in full. 

Amen.

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