Today this passage is fulfilled in your hearing.

 

THIRD SUNDAY IN OT C 2025

 

We have all now heard his Inaugural Address.  He outlined for us what his priorities and emphases will be for the year.  He told us where he intends to focus his energies and efforts.   He challenged us to join him in achieving these goals.  The Inaugural address of which I speak is not that of the President of the United States.

It is the inaugural message of Jesus Christ as presented in today’s Gospel.  The message proclaimed by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke is, however, every bit as much an Inaugural Address as were the words spoken by President Donald Trump.

 

Luke presents us with Jesus' first public speech at his hometown synagogue in Nazareth.  Luke presents a summary - here at the very beginning of his account - of what Jesus and his ministry will be about: his vision, his priorities, his goals.

Like presidential inaugural addresses that include quotations from the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, the inaugural address of Jesus harkens back to founding principles.  He quotes two different places from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.

The Lord has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives,
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To let the oppressed go free,
And to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord."

 Jesus clearly spells out where this new ministry he was beginning would be directed:  He would proclaim good news to the poor who - in his time or ours - only seem to hear bad news.  He would be about the business of freeing captives and giving sight to the blind and helping the oppressed break free of all that held them bound.  He would show people what an acceptable time to the Lord looked like.

In his Inaugural Address, Jesus clearly announces that his Gospel
…will be social,
…it will be focused outward on others,
…it will seek to build the Lord's justice.

Jesus then sits down, and, in words that launch his great mission of liberation, he says: ‘This text is being fulfilled today in your hearing’ (Lk 4:21). The words of Isaiah serve as Jesus’ manifesto. He has come to replace the old Jewish love of law with a new law of love and inaugurate the greatest revolution in human history.

 

Jesus’ mission leads him to challenge head-on the values of society. The afflictions of the poor, then as now, were, in large measure, caused by repression, discrimination and exploitation by the rich and powerful, the upholders of the status quo. Jesus directs his mission to those who had been ignored or pushed aside: to the sick, segregated on cultic grounds; to tax-collectors, excluded on political and religious grounds; and to public sinners, despised and rejected on moral grounds. In his compassionate outreach to these outcasts, Jesus embodies God’s kingly rule. This is good news for them as it means the end of their misery and the introduction of a new order of social relationships that includes them. Indeed, for Jesus no one is excluded from the love of God ‘who causes his sun to rise on bad people as well as good and sends rain to fall on the upright and the wicked alike’ (Mt 5:45).

 

Some theologians have argued that Jesus did not have a social or political agenda, that he wanted to change hearts not social structures. However, as the noted Scripture scholar, Tom Wright, points out, in the Judaism of Jesus’ day religion and politics were inseparable. As his contemporaries would have expected, Jesus sought to bring God’s kingly rule to bear on every aspect of human life. In the ‘Our Father’ he taught his disciples to pray: ‘Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ (Mt 6:10). The Kingdom proclaimed and enacted by Jesus was not merely the personal reign of God’s spirit in the souls of individuals. Jesus was launching a spiritual and social revolution that would turn Israel and the world up-side-down. He wanted to establish God’s reign of justice, peace, truth and love in Israel and (through Israel) among all peoples.

 

Jesus lived, died and rose again in order to establish God’s loving rule on earth, and the task of his disciples is to continue that work. In the words of Pope Francis, the mission of the Church is ‘to proclaim and establish among all peoples the kingdom of Christ and of God’. This mission entails the integral transformation of the world in which we live.

 

But we do not carry out this mission as isolated individuals. As our Second Reading from St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians reminds us, we are the Body of Christ, and it is as the Body of Christ that we continue Jesus’ mission. The different gifts received by the members of the Church from the Holy Spirit complement one another, and, when properly used, build up the unity of the Church and serve its mission. The synodal process, launched by Pope Francis over four years ago, and which must be continued, provides us with a graced opportunity to deepen our sense of being the Body of Christ, and to collaborate more effectively with one another in the service of the Church’s mission. It is only when the Church really functions as the Body of Christ – when all its members are truly open to the divine Spirit and to one another – that it becomes a credible sign and instrument of God’s reign of love and justice.

 

This week we celebrate Catholic Schools’ week.  In particular, we celebrate St Joseph’s School whose mission is to educate our children after the mind and heart of Jesus.  We believe that education without God is an incomplete education.  At our school, we celebrate the spiritual dimension of life.  Each day our students pray with much gratitude for the blessings of their life.  They are missioned to be kind, to be loving, to be forgiving.  My favorite part of going to Wegman’s is reading the sign above their suggestion box:  We listen, we care.  So too, our students are taught to listen and to care for one another in a way that values the human dignity of each student who is a beloved son or daughter of God.

 

So, we pray: ‘Lord, make us instruments of your peace, justice and love in our deeply divided and wounded world.’

 

Have a Blessed Day.