Daily Mass Gospel Reflection- Fulfilling Scripture

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 09.04.23 | Bishop Robert Barron

[MurphsLaw]

Luke 4:16-30

Friends, in today’s Gospel,
Jesus begins his Galilean ministry with a prophetic message in the synagogue at Nazareth:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He 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.”

The moment has arrived, the privileged time, the kairos;
something that human beings have been longing for
and striving after and hoping to see has appeared.
In Jesus of Nazareth, the divine and human have come together in a salvific way,
and this reconciliation is the long-awaited kingdom of God.

One motif in Scripture is persistent:
the passionate desire for deliverance,
the cry of the heart toward the God from whom the people feel alienated.
What Jesus announces in his first sermon,
and what he demonstrates throughout his life and ministry,
is that this wild desire of his ancestors,
this hope against hope, this intimate union of God and humanity,
is an accomplished fact, something that can be seen and heard and touched.

[MurphsLaw]

+++ Jesus came to Nazareth,
where he had grown up,
and went according to his custom
into the synagogue on the sabbath day.
He stood up to read and was
handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
He unrolled the scroll and found
the passage where it was written:

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

Rolling up the scroll,
he handed it back to the
attendant and sat down,
and the eyes of all in the
synagogue looked intently at him.
He said to them,
"Today this Scripture passage is
fulfilled in your hearing."
And all spoke highly of him
and were amazed at the gracious
words that came from his mouth.
They also asked,
"Is this not the son of Joseph?"
He said to them, "Surely you
will quote me this proverb,
'Physician, cure yourself,'
and say,
'Do here in your native place
the things that we heard were
done in Capernaum.'"
And he said,
"Amen, I say to you, no prophet
is accepted in his own native place.
Indeed, I tell you,
there were many widows in Israel
in the days of Elijah
when the sky was closed for
three and a half years
and a severe famine spread over the entire land.
It was to none of these that
Elijah was sent,
but only to a widow in Zarephath
in the land of Sidon.
Again, there were many lepers in Israel
during the time of Elisha the prophet;
yet not one of them was
cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian."
When the people in the synagogue heard this,
they were all filled with fury.
They rose up, drove him out of the town,
and led him to the brow of the hill
on which their town had been
built, to hurl him down headlong.
But he passed through the midst
of them and went away.+++