Only true love will win.

Anyone who has worked with people knows that it is challenging work. For kindness, help, and love, often, one gets the opposite reward – hatred, reluctance, and many forget to thank you. It is said that an unreasonable animal can appreciate man’s love more than the man himself. Perhaps these words are full of pessimism. Yes, there are also thoughtful, grateful people…

Let us learn from the actions of the Lord Jesus in today’s Gospel.

The Lord Jesus sighed sadly in the town where he had lived his whole life when his fellow Christians misunderstood his words: “Truly, I say to you: No prophet is rare in his own country” (Luke 4:25).
The Gospel passage is a continuation of how the Lord Jesus came to the little town of Nazareth after the first successes of His public ministry, where He had spent His entire childhood, youth, and early years of manhood since His return from Egypt. He had recently left Nazareth to fulfill His mission.
A few weeks were all it took for him to become known throughout the region by his words and the deeds he performed. And with the name grew the town’s fame from which he came. Indeed, the natives were curious about their fellow citizens. But it was only human curiosity. Jesus did not teach and perform miracles for his glory, as people in general do. His mission in life was to teach people and prepare them for the way to new life. After all, the nation was waiting for the Messiah.

But Jesus in the synagogue on the Sabbath, as an adult Jew who had the right to read and interpret the text of the Law, was not going to stand out among his fellow citizens. When he read a portion from the book of Isaiah the prophet, he said only one sentence, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled which you have just heard” (Luke 4:21). The words he had just read spoke of the future Messiah the nation was awaiting, who was himself. He proved it in a short time by his words and deeds. These words were meant to ask them to be even more happy and proud of their native son, who is the awaited Messiah.
And the attitude of the people of Nazareth? The opposite. Although they rejoice at the kind words he spoke, they misunderstand and ask themselves, “Is this not the son of Joseph?” (Lk 4:22). They knew the parents of Jesus, but nothing more. God had not revealed the mystery to them. However, they had the opportunity to see the truthfulness of Jesus’ words for themselves, for he would point out to them an old problem. Although the nation now recognized Elijah and Elisha, when these prophets carried out the commands given by God, the government did not accept them. The country had no genuine faith, so these prophets worked their wonders among the Gentiles.

That is why the incident of how Elijah helped a Gentile woman from Zarephath, who showed faith towards Elijah by first baking him a cake out of the last of the flour and oil, is mentioned to them. Similarly, it was the faith of Naaman of Syria who, on the advice of the prophet Elisha, bathed in the Jordan River and was cured of his sickness. In both cases, faith brought benefit.

This lesson was not borne by the inhabitants of Nazareth from their native, for they lacked this very faith, and therefore not only did they not accept him, but they still drove him out of the city and wanted to kill him.

This is not what God wants. His hour has not yet come; he has not yet completed his mission. We should pause over this event, primarily the actions of Jesus’ ancestors. Why? The Gospel has been preached to us. We have received it; we glory in it; perhaps we are fore-saved, redeemed, but beware! Do we live by it too? If not, many things are rightly thrown before our eyes by those who do not believe in God. We can be indignant when our faith is dulled. What about our life? Does it speak of the love of Christ? They have not believed, they have not encountered the teaching as we have, that the teaching of Jesus is love. They see our beliefs as an ideological enemy; they defend their unbelief, so let’s not be so surprised. We must not only accept the teachings of Christ but live them.

A person who does not believe in God and rejects everything connected with God, who has reserved views about the Church, will change his mind when he sees how the nuns took care of his mother in the institution and when he wants to give them an envelope, they discreetly refused it with a smile. And this was what convinced him of something and more than what he had been taught.

Original sin had made love-hate. Cain kills his brother Abel right at the start. It was confirmed in the Old Testament: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth! But Jesus taught: Thou shalt love… your neighbor as yourself…

Unless he believed in Jesus Christ, Paul the Apostle persecuted his followers. And yet, he thinks he’s doing the right thing. But when he meets Christ, he also writes these words to the Corinthians, “If I spoke with the tongues of men and angels, and had not to love, I should be as tinkling metal and a clanging cymbal.” (1 Cor. 13:1). In this way, Paul shows the perfect way of life he learned from Jesus and which Jesus’ fellow citizens wanted to avoid following.

To this, one of the most beautiful parts of Holy Scripture, we may give the title Hymn in Honor of Love.

The way of love truly surpasses all other forms. The truth is that love is the most necessary message for us humans. It is up to people how they approach it. We all need love. We want to give it to others and often do not have it ourselves. The way we are loved and how we can show love to others determines our inner balance and the quality of our spiritual life.

What Paul means to say in his words is what Jesus’ fellow citizens lacked and what he lacked after the gate of Damascus. It was love.
But love for Christ must fill our whole hearts. We must not save even the last corner for something else. Otherwise, it is only to our detriment. St. Paul says that we are to put our whole heart at the disposal of love. It sounds nice, but it must also be put into practice. It is not enough to show it in words; it is not enough to have a strong faith in knowledge. I would be nothing if I could carry even mountains and had no love. It is not enough to have compassion, to give away possessions; it is not enough to give my body because all this without love would not make me happy. Love will never cease.

Paul writes: “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I knew as a child, I thought like a child. When I became a man, I left behind childlike ways” (1 Cor. 13:11).
With these words, Paul speaks of his spiritual growth as he matured in the knowledge that if he would do anything but without love, it was of little value. Now he is a man because he has understood the meaning, the power of love, which moves mountains according to Christ’s words.
But Paul says that only a life affirmed by love, all that we do, all that we live, is entitled to a reward. However, he often experienced that people do not reciprocate love on the contrary. This must not frustrate us because we expect a tip from the One who is Love, whom we will one day see face to face. Though there are instances that we are rewarded for love already here on earth, that is only a partial reward. God one day wants to give the prize in perfect knowledge in His presence.

We must not act in our lives like the ancestors of Jesus of Nazareth. Let us not look at our faith with human eyes alone. Let us not regard our life as a matter to be ended only by death. We believe in life eternal. And we are to begin living that eternal life here on earth, in an environment laden with sin and unloved. By loving and fighting against corruption, we are to accept Jesus already here on earth as our God, our reward, our goal in life. How many times have we been convinced, like the widow of Zarephath, when we obeyed the words of the prophet-Church, that we were not only happy but prosperous. How many times have we been convinced in our flesh when, like Naaman of Syria, we plunged, not into water, but tears of remorse and repentance for our sins, that we were not only clean again but happier? Our motives, however, had to be imbued with love.

Faith is not the fear of God, as those who do not understand often think. Faith is the response of love to love, even though ours is very weak imperfect. Those who know the life of at least one convert, a person who has indeed found the way to God, can see the power of love for God.

The biography of André M. Ampère is undoubtedly familiar to students. He is a world-famous French mathematician and physicist. At the age of 18, he was one of the world’s geniuses. An explorer, a member of the Academy. His name is associated with electric current – the unit of the intensity of electric current – the ampere. But he had a tough life. Although he was a fervent Catholic in his youth, he soon lost his faith. Heavy losses, exile, and his father’s death, his wife… The internal struggle, mental contradictions. He writes: “I carry a real hell in my heart. No one even knows what is going on inside me. Nobody can comfort me.” And elsewhere, he writes again: “The world envies my fame. God lets me know that everything is vanity except His glory. The son Jean-Jacques has become a rogue and a pervert. Daughter Albine married an alcoholic and a psychopath. And God gives him the meaning of life. In the spring of 1836, in Marseilles, Ampère fell ill with encephalitis. When he was warned to receive the sacraments, he calmly said he had already done so in Paris before leaving. When they wanted to read to him from Kempenski’s little book On the Following of Christ, Ampère declared that they should not bother, for he knew the whole book by heart. He languished on his deathbed for a long time. He chose his inscription for his grave. Only two Latin words: “Tandem Felix!” – “Happy at last!” He deserves respect from us Christians. He showed us the connection between faith and science. What about us?

Ampère has not tasted much love from his children and surroundings, yet, even after difficult inner struggles, he has achieved that love has prevailed in him.
Let us learn from Christ to overcome evil hatred. Let us know to rise above those who have not grown in returning love. Jesus also died for his fellow citizens, though they wanted to kill him. Let us forgive again and again anyone who has misunderstood love.