Lord Jesus, enable me to accept the pain of rejection as a sharing in your redemptive suffering and empower me to proclaim your word effectively. |
How do you handle rejection? How do you feel when another refuses to recognize and accept what you have to offer? Rejection has been proven to be an inevitable companion on the bumpy road to success. Take for example, the experience of Beethoven, who was dubbed by his teacher, “hopeless as a composer”. No stranger to difficulty, Winston Churchill failed sixth grade. He did not become Prime Minister of Great Britain until he was 62 and then only after a lifetime of defeats and setbacks. Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor who said he lacked ideas and imagination. He also went bankrupt several times before opening the doors to Disneyland. Eighteen publishers rejected Richard Bach’s novel “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”, before Macmillan finally published it in 1970. To date, this repeatedly rejected book has sold 40 million copies in more than three dozen languages. In 1905, the University of Bern rejected a doctoral dissertation as being “irrelevant” and “fanciful”. The physics student who authored the paper was Albert Einstein. Disappointed but not defeated, he persisted and we all know to what extent he changed the world.
Having listened to this litany of stories about the rejection endured by writers, musicians, statespersons, artists and entertainers, we cannot help but recognize a common thread through them all. Despite even repeated and prolonged experience of rejection, each of these individuals did not allow anything or anyone to deter them. Undaunted, each persevered to become the person and to achieve the purpose toward which they had dedicated their lives and energies.
In today’s 1st reading (Amos 7:12-15) and Gospel (Mk 6:7-13), the praying assembly is offered additional lessons in dealing with rejection in the persons and experiences of Amos the prophet and Jesus our Messiah. Despite the objections of the priest Amaziah, who wanted to be rid of the prophet and his confrontational message, Amos knew that he had been deployed and equipped by a higher power than the priest. He preached his message without stinting or diluting its truth.
In today’s Gospel, as Jesus prepares the Twelve to minister in his name, he tells them that they will, indeed, encounter rejection; he also offers them and us a method for dealing with this inevitable aspect of discipleship. “ If any place will not receive you…..shake its dust from your feet….as you leave.” By this symbolic action, the disciples pledge their willingness to make a new beginning, carrying forward none of the “baggage” of rejection. It means setting out anew with no trace of anger, resentment or desire for revenge upon those who have chosen not to welcome them or their message. They will accept the pain of rejection as a sharing in the redemptive sufferings of the One who calls us to ministry.
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