From now until Advent the daily gospel will be taken from St. Luke’s Gospel. Today we hear the story of Jesus inaugurating his ministry at his home town of Nazareth. He read from the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me …” He concluded with a personal word: “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” How different would the Church look if we took as our marching orders the mission that Jesus laid our for himself: “to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” These are not institutional concerns like teaching and baptizing (Cf. Matthew 28:16-20) but human concerns that impact society as a whole.
