New Year often marks a new start for many of us—we make resolutions because we want to transform our lives. For some of us it might having to make a new start away from home as we, for example, start a new job. In our Gospel today, Matthew sees Jesus leaving the safety and security of his family home in Nazareth. I love visiting Nazareth as one can get a feel for the ordinary and very human life of Jesus. As you walk the streets of this bustling pilgrimage centre, one realises that this is where Jesus lived for the majority of his life. In visiting the ancient chapel of St Joseph, one gets a feel for his probable occupation during his hidden life. In the hills above the town, I love to visit the Basilica of Jesus the Adolescent, attached to the Salesian High School. I like to imagine that it this was where Jesus played games with his friends before being called down for his evening meal by Mary. As you sit in the beauty and simplicity of this Church dedicated to Jesus as a teenager, you can hear the teenagers of modern Nazareth playing soccer and basketball in the adjoining playground—over the centuries much has changed in this simple town, but the essentials, like youngsters playing together, have remained the same.

However, in order make a new start in ministry, Jesus moves away from the quiet little town to the bustling port of Capernaum. As a busy trading centre, Jesus would be able to meet a variety of people from across the region. There is an urgency about this move. The city, nestled between Zebulun and Naphtali, was a real melting pot of cultures and faiths. Isaiah can refer to it as the 'Galilee of the Nations'. It could be that Matthew is preparing us for the missionary outreach that comes at the end of the Gospel. Jesus is the chosen one for all the world. He is the one who continues to bring that Bethlehem light, inviting us to share God-like positivity:

There is no gloom where there had been distress. Where once he degraded the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, now he has glorified the way of the Sea, the land across the Jordan, Galilee of the Nations. (Isa 8:23)

Today's gospel lays the foundation for the entire year. In fact, we get the entire gospel in a nutshell. In this passage from Matthew we hear the core of Jesus' message, a message that he will explore, and explain throughout his ministry:

Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand! (Matt 4:17)

We are invited to turn our lives around—we are asked to make a real difference. Over the next few months, Matthew's Gospel will help us to see how our lives can be more wholesome if we heed that advice. As we pray the prayer the 'Our Father' we ask that the reign of God bursts into our daily experience. We do not pray for some spiritual pie in the sky: our faith is rooted in experience. The birth of Jesus helps us all to move forward and discover the beauty and strength of life. In the powerful Emmaus Road encounter, the grieving disciples could not recognise who the 'stranger' was-even after their peripatetic scripture lesson. Notice it is the two disciples who take the initiative and welcome the Risen Lord to their table of welcome. In reaching out to this 'stranger' they found God as he broke the Bread of Life and shared the Cup of Blessing. Salvation came to them in the context of a meal. Perhaps before we invite people to Jesus or invite them to church, we should invite them to dinner. If table fellowship is a spiritual discipline that is vital for shaping and sustaining our life with God for the world, we need to make a point to share our tables with people who are in our lives but far from God. This was one of the most distinctive aspects of Jesus's ministry. It is my prayer that we too can meet Jesus today in the ordinary-even the ordinary fish and chips you might share in your house today: we DO live in a holy place, as the Irish mystic, John O'Donohue reminds us:

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place

Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,

Transforming our broken fragments

Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

John O'Donohue, 'The Inner History of a Day'

Author: Fr Gerry O'Shaughnessy SDB

Photo by Juliette F on Unsplash