Everyone has experienced this feeling of being stereotyped in some way. It might be returning to the area where you grew up after graduating college and working for a few years. But the people “back home” only recall the youth who often get into trouble. So, they would be skeptical to the point of laughter and possibly mocking you when you told them you were working for the FBI. Today’s Gospel develops an uncomfortable theme. It tells how the people of Nazareth rejected Jesus. Bishop Barron writes that authentically religious and authentically spiritual people will almost always be opposed. The logic behind this is simple and unanswerable: we live in a world gone wrong, a world turned upside down; therefore, when someone speaks the truth to us, we will think that they are crazy and dangerous. Think for just a moment what would happen to you if you consistently and publicly spoke the word of God to our culture. If you spoke out against abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, human trafficking, rampant materialism, and ideological secularism, what would happen to you? If you presented, in a full-throated way, the full range of Catholic social, moral, and spiritual teachings, what would they do to you? Perhaps this is an excellent day to consider our reactions. Just because we have known people for years, we sometimes fail to recognize that they have changed. In our blindness, we can miss the talents they have acquired. How open and gracious are we in seeing people in a positive light when we are caught off guard by a revelation about who they have become that is different than what we pictured? How willing are we to listen and accept them as they are now?