Isn’t this the son of Joseph?” the amazed throng asks about Jesus. They want to put him in his place, a familiar place, a nonthreatening place. Do I try to put limits on God? On other people?

Love, faith, prophecy, vocation. The hearers of today’s readings will want to find themselves in these great themes. God tells Jeremiah his prophetic vocation was chosen from before his birth—in other words, he always had it, whether he knew it or not.

The wisdom of folk songs is that they gently remind us of things we already know. Graham Nash’s 1970 classic, “Teach Your Children,” recalls that children can’t possibly appreciate the hell their parents lived through and how hard-won are the values they now hold.

Jeffrey’s brother Jesse was slow. Though Jesse was two year’s older, he acted years younger than Jeffrey. He had suffered brain damage at birth and would never progress past the mental maturity of a 4-year-old.

You know, it was the one about being nothing but a gong.” So said my friend when describing the reading he was asked to do at a wedding. The gong is an unforgettable scriptural image.

We live in world filled with uncertainties, especially since acts of terrorism have increased. What we used to take for granted, we are now concerned with, worrying over, upset by. Something that once was so simple—flying on an airplane—has become more complex than ever.

We are called to love, which means we are called to openness, honesty, and care. Let us give voice to the concerns as well as the hopes that reside in our hearts.

Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his native place. The gospel reading picks up where last week’s left off, and we get the “rest of the story.”

Desiring to win over the whole world and bring its inhabitants to God the Father . . . and, in sense, renewing the face of the earth, the Lord of the universe took the form of a servant and brought the good news to the poor. This, he said, was why he had been sent. —Saint Cyril of Alexandria (376-444)