August 2, 2013 8:30am

A French author names George Sand once made this simple statement:

“Admiration and familiarity are strangers.”

I suppose that this is another way of saying, “Familiarity breeds contempt.”

This seems to be the basis for what happens in today’s gospel.

Jesus returns to his home town of Nazareth and the people treat him with suspicion and derision.

After all, they had seen him growing up.

They knew that he came from a home and family just like their own.

So, how could he be so special?

They reflect an odd and unfortunate human tendency – to miss and even to reject the talent, the wisdom, or the brilliance of those we know very well.

Maybe we do this because we just look at the ordinariness of one another.

Maybe we do it because we only look at the dark sides, the deficiencies of one another.

Maybe we don’t expect and therefore don’t look for the special in those we live with or see all the time.

A French writer named Gabriel Marcel said that a mystery isn’t something that is so far beyond us that we can’t grasp it.

Rather, it is something that is so near to us that we can’t get a fix on it.

It is so close that it simply eludes us.

Maybe this is why we have a hard time explaining something as important, as pervasive, and seemingly as simple as love.

So today Jesus stands before his home town people with the mystery of God’s presence and of salvation.

This mystery is not hidden or complicated, but they miss it and turn him off.

So maybe the lesson is to look for the positive, for the good, even for the special right in the ordinary persons and events and things around us.

Look for this, keep it simple, and then we won’t miss God or Jesus when he is standing right before us with that breakthrough insight or healing word or kind action.