(LK 4:16-21)
In the power of the Spirit, Jesus begins His ministry and inaugurates the Jubilee Year in which God is experienced as Father in the fraternity among His children. Jesus presents Himself as the fulfilment of the ‘word of grace’, which offers God’s blessing and fulfils His promise (v. 18-19).
The evangelist wants his reader to meet this word of grace proclaimed ‘today’, (v. 20). Its roots are in the past —the promise of Isaiah and the figures of Elijah and Elisha— and is actualised ‘today’, in the eternal today of God, which was realised once and for all in Jesus, and is actualised whenever the Word is proclaimed in His name.
The Scripture finds its fulfilment in the ears of those who listen to Jesus, who proclaims it (v. 21): the promise is announced as realised in Him, listening to His Word as spoken by Him. From the outset, Jesus appears as more than a scribe or a prophet. He not only explains the Word of God, but He also actualises it. This actualisation does not consist of adaptation to His own time, but in ‘making it present’: He translates what the Word says into action and, in obedience, embodies His life in it. He, the obedient Son, is the perfect listener who fulfils the Word, and in Him, this finds its full actualization.
Thus, for us too, fulfilling the Word means listening to the Gospel. Obedience to it makes us present to the today of God, present to Jesus, the Son, in whom the history of every human being finds fulfilment. The proclamation of the word of grace has the power to make us obey it and be renewed according to the promise. It pleases God to save the world through the proclamation of the Gospel (1 Cor 1:21).
In this inaugural discourse, we find the authentic explanation of the ministry of Jesus. His goal for us: to live as children of the Father, brothers and sisters among us, through listening to His Word and acting upon it, in the power of love, which is the Spirit of God today.
Jesus reads the promise of Is 61, which announces the definitive Jubilee Year in which the earth, the Father’s gift to his children, is redistributed. Jesus realises the definitive sabbatical year, the fulfilment of all creation in God and God in all creation. Faith in God becomes new justice among men.
This is why the Jubilee Year is fundamental to the legislation of Israel. The Church of Acts understands itself as the true Israel, which actualises the Jubilee Year (cf. Acts 2:42-48; 4:32-37).
The word of Jesus is not a mere commentary on the promise of God. It is the ‘Gospel’, the Good News in which the one who realises it has come among us. Jesus’ listeners stand before the one who fulfils every promise. The Scripture is fulfilled today ‘in the ears’ of the hearers. Hence the entire Gospel according to Luke becomes a listening to His word, which makes us contemporaries of Him: in the obedience of faith, we enter into salvation.
Jesus is the perfect listener who carries out the will of the Father: His word becomes reality and life in Him, in His today. In turn, whoever listens to Jesus and acts upon His word, finds himself/ herself living in the same today. Jesus in His powerful proclamation, realises salvation, which is actualised for whoever hears it. The Word, spoken once and for all, exists always, and wherever it is heard and followed, just like in written music, it is executed.
(Fr. Silvano Fausti)
