THE Gospel reading in last Sunday Sunday’s Mass (July 6, 2015) was about Jesus’ encounter with the people in his native place, presumably after he was away from them for some time. This was Gospel reading: “Jesus came to his native place accompanied by his disciples. When the Sabbath came (Jesus) began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished. They said, ‘Where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands! Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?’ And they took offense at him. We can see that instead of welcoming him his town mates rejected him. Although he did good by sharing with them his wisdom and healing the sick, nevertheless, they took offense at him. We have a saying that “familiarity breeds contempt.” Some may consider this Gospel episode as an example of that saying. This saying, however, is only partly true. We know for a fact that in many cases familiarity with other people do not result in contempt. They instead breed friendship, love and even devotion. Strictly speaking this saying is false. When contempt develops in a relationship it is not due to familiarity in itself. It is rather due to an attitude one has assumed after one has become familiar with another person or others. This attitude is at the bottom a result of a choice. In other words one chooses to regard other persons with contempt. The other choice we can make however is to regard others with understanding and acceptance. It is part of our sinful or fallen human nature that we often choose to regard others with contempt or with other negative judgments when something about them does not please us. We sometimes do this even if they are good. This was the case with the town mates of Jesus. Why one decides to make that choice can be due to many reasons. One of them is prejudice. We sometimes have prejudices about other people that are bred by some unhappy experience with these persons in the past. Oftentimes the prejudice iss inculcated in us by the milieu that we grew up in. The attitude of the town mates of Jesus is clearly a case of prejudice. They have prejudged him. They would not allow him to be that new person he has become simply because of what they knew of him in the past. They regard the wisdom and the miraculous cure that he performed as humiliating them. They misinterpret his good deeds and as putting one over them. ”They took offense at him”. Although Jesus is God he was also human and he grew and developed just like any human person but without the sins that we have inherited from our forebears. In this episode his town mates could not accept the new person that he has become and the wisdom and the power of healing that that he manifested. Their attitude is something that we are very familiar with. One explanation for this could be what we Filipinos call the “crab mentality.” Some have said that we Filipinos are like the crabs. Crabs according to them do not like seeing other crabs get ahead of them as they climb from the water in a pail or as they climb from the shore to get to the land. So they pull down those who are ahead of them. This claim may be true in some cases but certainly not true with others. I sometimes wonder however how some people get to think this way about crabs. I doubt if crabs have any such thought of competing with other crabs. This is evidently a projection of some people on the crab. This may reveal a tendency in them to pull down other people who are ahead of them in some competition in life. This “crab mentality” however seems to be a universal phenomenon. It is really a form of envy. The Gospel reading ought to be a lesson for us to avoid falling into envy. •• Happy anniversary to Gold Star Daily!