The 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, September 7, 2025

Luke 14, 25-33

Great crowds were traveling with Jesus, and he turned and addressed them, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work, the onlookers should laugh at him and say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’ Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms. In the same way, everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

The Lord Jesus, as he traveled for the last time to Jerusalem, had come to the height of his popularity with the Jewish people.  They hailed him as the longed-for Messiah, wondered at his miracles, and hung on his words.  As he approached the Holy City, with the Passover coming on, they felt that he would overthrow the corrupt Temple officials, declare the kingdom of David restored, and then begin the revolt against the Romans.  They wanted to join in.  Yet, as he proceeded, “he turned and addressed them.”  He wanted to warn them of what it really means to follow him.  

“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”  The Greek word translated here as “hating” means just that.  An alternative meaning is even stronger, “detesting”.  Although this expression is explained as hyperbole, the Lord’s meaning is clear: the love of these others must not come before the love of Jesus Christ.  The Lord claims much more than a political leader or a religious reformer.  He claims first place in the hearts of those who wish to follow him.  Everyone else in the follower’s life comes as a distant second.  The Lord says, unless the follower does this, “he cannot be my disciple”.  The verb is better translated as “is not able”, as in, He is not able to be my disciple.  That is, Jesus does not himself establish this condition for discipleship, but declares that unless the follower upends his life so that he is its primary object, the follower will not have the ability to be his disciple.  It will be beyond him.  Jesus clearly makes a demand that only God could make.  And those who would be with the Lord entirely forego marriage and careers.  

“Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”  If the crowd was shocked by the Lord’s first declaration, we can only imagine their feelings upon hearing this second one.  To “carry a cross” meant the greatest public shame and the most severe torture.  The Lord was demanding that those who would follow him must embrace this shame and agony.  It is as though the Lord were promising to lead his disciples to the horrific fate of crucifixion priests instead of the power and glory they desired.  These words remain as hard to understand today as they did two thousand years ago because they lead us to unacceptable conclusions.  They mean that we must break our own will in order to conform ourselves entirely to the will of Almighty God.

He makes a third demand: “Everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”  The Greek verb translated here as “renounced” also means “to withdraw” and “to take leave of”.  This can be done literally or through the conversion of one’s attitude towards one’s possessions: in some way, they are for the service of Christ.  

These three demands liberate us from obstacles that would hinder our service to Jesus: relationships, our willfulness, and our property.  The virtues that free us from these are chastity, obedience, and poverty — the evangelical counsels.  The Lord loves them so that we can live them, and we live them so that we might have life with him.

Saturday in the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, September 6, 2025

Luke 6, 1-5

While Jesus was going through a field of grain on a Sabbath, his disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. Some Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Have you not read what David did when he and those who were with him were hungry? How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering, which only the priests could lawfully eat, ate of it, and shared it with his companions?” Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

It is useful, when reading the Gospel according to St. Luke, to keep in mind that the author is writing for a Gentile Christian audience, likely living in Syria.  They were lacking in their knowledge of the Jews, their history, customs, and religion.  Perhaps much of what they knew about the Jews came by way of what they learned about Jesus.  This makes Luke’s inclusion of the account which forms the Gospel reading for today’s Mass rather curious.  It is all about Jewish concerns, such as the matter of the Sabbath.  Such an inclusion was bound to cause Luke’s readers wonder who he thought he was writing for.  And yet, the inclusion of this story shows Luke’s eagerness to tell all he knew about the life of the Lord — and the eagerness of his audience for hearing every detail about it.

The question in the story really revolves around who is the true Jew here.  The Apostles are hungry and eating the heads of the grain.  The Pharisees respond by demanding, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?”  Now, the Apostles, in point of fact, are not breaking any of the Mosaic laws regarding the Sabbath.  There is no more a prohibition against their rubbing the heads of the grain in their hands and eating them than of their walking through a field of grain.  The Pharisees were seeking to enforce a rule of their own invention under the pretense that Moses had commanded it.  They might get away with this with the common folks who listened to piecemeal readings from the Law in their synagogues, but not with one who knew the Law, and certainly not with the One who had given the Law through Moses in the first place.

The Lord answers their accusation by giving an example from the life of David.  He references the time when David was fleeing from King Saul, and he and his men had not eaten in days.  They came to the place where the Ark of the Covenant was kept and sought for bread: “He went into the house of God, took the bread of offering, which only the priests could lawfully eat, ate of it, and shared it with his companions.”  The account is found in 1 Samuel 21, 1-9.  The Lord does not at this time expose the fraud of the Pharisees.  He will do this later, in a public place.  He is in a hurry now to preach in the next town.  He dismisses the Pharisees by making a great claim: “The Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath.”  It is the Son of Man who is Lord of the Sabbath, not the Pharisees, and he himself is the Son of Man.  This title originated in the Scriptures in Daniel 7, 13-14: “One like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and he came even to the Ancient of days: and they [the angels] presented him before him. And he gave him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve him: his power is an everlasting power that shall not be taken away: and his kingdom that shall not be destroyed.”  This passage, which the Pharisees knew, reminded them of the Lord’s miracles, which they themselves had witnessed, and which validated his claim to be both the Son of Man and the Lord of the Sabbath.  And he was the same Lord who had permitted David to eat the loaves as the one who permitted the Apostles to rub the grain heads and eat them.

What were the Gentile Christians supposed to do with this story?  Although the questions in it may have remained obscure for them, they could see clearly enough that the true Jew here was Jesus, not his opponents, who claimed to be the authentic interpreters of the Law.  And this helped them understand one reason why the Jews ultimately rejected him — they preferred their falsehood to the truth about God and his commandments.  The story helps us to better understand the Lord’s personality: loyal to his disciples; disdainful of the opinions of others; powerful, concise, and incisive in his speech; zealous to preach; unswerving in his mission; mindful of his dignity.

Friday in the 22nd Week Of Ordinary Time, September 5, 2025

Luke 5, 33-39

The scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus, “The disciples of John the Baptist fast often and offer prayers, and the disciples of the Pharisees do the same; but yours eat and drink.” Jesus answered them, “Can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days.” And he also told them a parable. “No one tears a piece from a new cloak to patch an old one. Otherwise, he will tear the new and the piece from it will not match the old cloak. Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined. Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins. And no one who has been drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’”

The scribes and the Pharisees rightly saw the lack of fasting on the part of the Apostles as a sign that the Lord’s ministry differed markedly from theirs.  This should have led them to realize that Jesus differed markedly from them and also from John the Baptist.  It differed in substance and purpose.  In substance, it differed in that Jesus was the Son of God and not a mere human being whose teaching authority came either from Jerusalem or from the teacher’s own ability to convince others that he taught the truth.  It differed in purpose, since Jesus came as the Messiah to lead the people to true freedom, and the Pharisees and John the Baptist only taught that the Messiah was coming.

“Can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?”  Jesus speaks of himself as the Bridegroom and of his Apostles as “wedding guests” and as “the bridegroom’s friends”.  He, indeed, is the true Bridegroom, the Model for all bridegrooms to follow.  He is not like a bridegroom; other men can only be bridegrooms to the extent that they participate in him as Bridegroom.  He possesses perfectly in himself all the virtues which pertain to his office as Bridegroom, particularly in his willingness to die for his Bride, the Church: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church and delivered himself up for her” (Ephesians 5, 25).  While the wedding banquet is taking place at the Bride’s home, this world, there is eating and drinking.  When the Bridegroom “is taken away”, and is on the road, leading his Bride to her new home, that of her Husband, there is no eating and drinking.  But when the Groom brings the Bride into his house, they enjoy a new banquet, and the rejoicing extends into eternity.  Already, the Lord Jesus looks forward to the last day of the world, when the Church, his Bride, “the Holy City” and “the new Jerusalem” would come down out of heaven from God, “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21, 5).

“No one tears a piece from a new cloak to patch an old one. Otherwise, he will tear the new and the piece from it will not match the old cloak.”. Here, the Lord offers wisdom in the form of a familiar domestic situation.  He adds another to strengthen his point: “No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined.”  He tells the solution to the wineskin problem: “Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins.”  He is speaking here of the grace necessary for faith.  The old wineskins are torn: the old covenant has broken down due to the people failing, through their immoral behavior, to keep their promise.  But a “patch” of new cloth is useless; what is necessary is an entirely new wineskin for the new wine: grace transforms a person so that he can believe and live in harmony with God.  

“And no one who has been drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’ ”  This would seem to be a saying separate from the parable of the wineskins and Luke includes it here simply because he has just recounted how Jesus was speaking of wine.  In this particular passage, “the old wine” is “Tradition”.  Tradition is preferable to novelty.  Tradition is governed from within itself and offers safety and certainty.  Tradition is not static; it grows, but incrementally, and it does not go off in arbitrary directions.  Novelty is based on whimsy and is nothing if not arbitrary.  The Lord Jesus worked within the authentic Jewish tradition, whereas the Pharisees had departed from it with their inauthentic beliefs and practices, which the Lord calls, on one occasion, “the traditions of men”.  Living within the Tradition of the Holy Church, which succeeds and fulfills Jewish tradition, we rest secure in knowing that we have all that is necessary for our salvation.

Thursday in the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, September 4, 2025

Luke 5, 1-11

While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening to the word of God, he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret. He saw two boats there alongside the lake; the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon said in reply, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.” When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come to help them. They came and filled both boats so that the boats were in danger of sinking. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him and all those with him, and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners of Simon. Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.

This very dramatic account of the call by Jesus of his first Apostles is found only in St. Luke’s Gospel.  At first glance, this account seems not to fit in with what Sts. Matthew, Mark, and John tell us about their call.  Matthew and Mark tell us very simply that the Lord Jesus was walking one early morning on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and called these men after a hard night’s work.  John tells us that Andrew brought his brother Peter to Jesus after spending a good part of the day with him.  These accounts are easily reconciled, however.  The first meeting of Andrew and Peter with Jesus came in the way that John describes it.  At the time, Jesus was living near the place, in Judea, where John was baptizing.  Andrew was a disciple of John, and perhaps Peter was as well.  They would have listened to John preach for some days and then gone to their home in Capernaum to fish, and after some time they would return to John.  According to John the Apostle, Jesus did not call Peter and Andrew to follow him at the time they first met.  The other Evangelists tell us of the actual call.  Matthew and Mark give us the bare outline, which Luke fills in with the details he provides.  

Luke gives us a very dramatic report of what happened the very early morning, with dawn breaking, when the Lord called Peter and the others.  First, there is the preaching in the boat to the crowd on the shore.  Then the pushing out into deeper water where the exhausted fishermen throw their nets yet another time, into the hitherto barren waters.  Almost immediately, the nets fill up with fish.  The sudden catch takes the fishermen completely by surprise and they scramble to pull up the nets before either they break or the boat topples over by the weight of the catch in the net.  The ship maintained by the Zebedee family pushes out to help them.  After a great struggle, the boats, filled with fish are able to return to shore.  Peter is stunned.  He looks at all the fish — the biggest catch he has ever hauled in — and he looks out at the water, now beginning to be lit by the sun’s warming rays, and he looks at Jesus, who stands close to him in the boat.  All around, the fishermen are cheering and shouting for joy and slapping each other on the back.  Peter, his breath still coming in heaves from the work and the excitement, looks at Jesus in silence.  Jesus is looking not just at him, but into him.  Into his heart.  Peter can feel it.  He struggles for words and stammers out, as he falls upon his knees, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”  Jesus heard him, and Peter felt Jesus hear him, and then Jesus said to him, his voice clear over the noise of the men and the sea, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”  Peter, then known as Simon, Andrew, James, and John did not know what the Lord meant by “catching men”, but they knew that this Rabbi from Nazareth was calling them to follow him, and “when they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.”  We note that Jesus did not reject Peter’s confession.  Jesus knew well the condition of Peter’s soul.  Jesus chose Peter anyway, showing that he does call sinners to follow him and even to lead his Church.  He sustains his call to Peter even after Peter denied him after his arrest.  He knows that we are all sinners and he calls us anyway, even to the greatest heights of sanctity.  Peter and the others did not yet realize it, but they themselves had been caught by God.

Wednesday in the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, September 3, 2025

Luke 4, 38-44

After Jesus left the synagogue, he entered the house of Simon. Simon’s mother-in-law was afflicted with a severe fever, and they interceded with him about her. He stood over her, rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up immediately and waited on them.  At sunset, all who had people sick with various diseases brought them to him. He laid his hands on each of them and cured them. And demons also came out from many, shouting, “You are the Son of God.” But he rebuked them and did not allow them to speak because they knew that he was the Christ.  At daybreak, Jesus left and went to a deserted place. The crowds went looking for him, and when they came to him, they tried to prevent him from leaving them. But he said to them, “To the other towns also I must proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God, because for this purpose I have been sent.” And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.

The killing and wounding of Catholic school children in Minnesota last week has shocked not only the Faithful but the nation.  The murderer hated the Catholic Faith and carefully planned out his attack.  He has already stood before the throne of God and gone to where he will spend eternity. We pray for the souls of the murdered children, for the recovery of the wounded, and for the conversion of those who hate us.

“After Jesus left the synagogue.”  St. Luke presents the most likely sequence of events at the beginning of the Lord’s public ministry: after his baptism by John in the Jordan, he is tempted in the wilderness.  Coming out of the wilderness, “Jesus returned in the power of the spirit, into Galilee: and the fame of him went out through the whole country.  And he taught in their synagogues and was magnified by all” (Luke 4, 14-15).  And then he came to Nazareth and was rejected by his former neighbors there.  After this rejection, he moved on to Capernaum, called his first Apostles, cast out the demon from the possessed man in the synagogue, and now goes into Simon and Andrew’s house.  St. Matthew mentions that Jesus left Nazareth and came to Capernaum (cf. Matthew 4, 13) but tells the story of his rejection there further on in his Gospel (cf. Matthew 13, 54-58).   

“Simon’s mother-in-law was afflicted with a severe fever.”  It is unknown whether Simon Peter and Andrew knew before they entered the house that the mother-in-law was suffering from illness.  But when they and Jesus, and, presumably, James and John, came inside the house, “they interceded with him about her”.  A high fever in ancient times often meant the imminence of death.  Peter’s wife may not have known Jesus and so there confusion would have reigned between the frantic wife, the dying woman, and the Apostles attempting to instill calm and introduce the Lord, as well as pleading with him to cure the older woman.  Jesus alone remained quiet in the midst of this, his gaze upon the her on her bed.  “He stood over her, rebuked the fever, and it [the fever] left her.”  Let us note the utter dispassion of Luke’s account.  In a very cool, matter-of-fact fashion, he tells us that Jesus healed the woman.  He saved her life.  And then, just as cooly, Luke tells us that “She got up immediately and waited on them.”  One moment she lay at death’s door, and the next she went about helping with dinner as though she had not been sick at all.  The woman did not merely recover; she was granted her health back immediately.  The Lord had administered no potions, spoke hardly a word, and had healed her.  Any neighbors in the house at that time would have run out of the house, astounded, and spread the news.  The Lord, for his part, made no speeches or explanations after the healing.  The Apostles saw in him no sign that he had done anything so extraordinary.  Perhaps he and the stunned Apostles sat in silence together as the meal was prepared.

“At sunset, all who had people sick with various diseases brought them to him.”  In third world countries today, even a rumor that a doctor has arrived in a particular village brings out people from miles away who have nursed injuries and borne sickness for a long time.  They come across the fields and roads, desperately seeking relief.  From Capernaum the news had spread that a healer had arrived.  He had cast out a demon in the synagogue and cured without delay a woman sick unto death.  Those who could walk, walked.  Those who could not, were carried.  They waited until sunset to set out so as not to break the Sabbath.

“He laid his hands on each of them and cured them.”  One day, we hope to feel the Lord Jesus’s hands upon us as he greets us in heaven.  We can try to imagine what that will feel like, to have the hands of God upon us.  These sick and injured felt his hands upon them and felt the power which healed them and made them whole. Even the demons fled in terror from him.  Everyone who came to him was healed.  He turned no one away.  

“At daybreak, Jesus left and went to a deserted place.”  Luke does not tell us how many hours the Lord spent healing people.  At some point the last person needing healing departed and the crowd drifted away, and perhaps the Lord went back to Peter’s house and slept a little.  But he was up at daybreak to pray: “At daybreak, Jesus left and went to a deserted place.”  We ought to marvel at how little sleep the Lord got during his public life.  The Apostles, too, slept little, but more than he.  It was as though he was aware that his time was running out, and still so many villages to visit and crowds to preach to.  The Apostles and the crowd, discovering he had left the house, went looking for him.  They wanted him to stay.  Together with their amazement at his the miracles, they felt drawn to his person who filled them with hope, and who spoke of the arrival of the Kingdom of God.  They said to one another, “No one has ever spoken as this man has” (cf. John 7, 46).

“To the other towns also I must proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God, because for this purpose I have been sent.”  The Lord tells them this without the hint of apology or softening.  And as he has done in Capernaum, so will he do in towns and villages throughout Galilee and Judea.  And having spoken to the crowd, he gathered his Apostles and moved on.

We should be aware of the contrasts in Luke’s account here.  The almost silent Jesus performing incredible cures and exorcisms.  He is set apart even in the midst of the crowds by his quiet, authoritative demeanor, by his simple gestures.  Around him surges a crowd of the diseased, the lame, the blind, the deaf, the deformed, those suffering from great pain, the howling demoniacs, and those who came only to watch.  So much disorder around him.  It is the same Lord who will sleep in Peter’s boat during the raging storm, the same Lord who will walk on the billowing sea, the same Lord who hung on the Cross on Calvary, assailed by the mockery of the priests, Pharisees, and scribes: “He opened not his mouth: he shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth” (Isaiah 53, 7).

Tuesday in the Twenty-Second Week of Ordinary Time, September 2, 2025

Luke 4, 31-37

Jesus went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee. He taught them on the sabbath, and they were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority. In the synagogue there was a man with the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out in a loud voice, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are–the Holy One of God!” Jesus rebuked him and said, “Be quiet! Come out of him!” Then the demon threw the man down in front of them and came out of him without doing him any harm. They were all amazed and said to one another, “What is there about his word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.” And news of him spread everywhere in the surrounding region.

A distance of a little over twenty miles, as the crow flies, separates Nazareth from Capernaum, certainly not far by modern standards, but the road between the two towns ran through the hilly, rocky country of southern Galilee to the lusher land around the Sea of Galilee.  About 1,500 souls populated Capernaum in those days, while Nazareth held some 400.  Jesus set up his headquarters here, early in his ministry, evidently at the house of his Apostle Peter.  Set along the shore of the sea, the little town bustled with the catching and selling of fish.

“Jesus went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee.”  Luke assumes his readers would know in general where the Galilee region was located.  Matthew writes more specifically, “He came and dwelt in Capharnaum on the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and of Nephthalim” (Matthew 4, 13) for the benefit of Galileans who knew the area but not the town.

“He taught them on the sabbath.”  The Lord was teaching the Jews of the town in the fine synagogue whose recent construction was financed by the local centurion and in which the people took great pride.  “They were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority.”  The Greek word here translated as “astonished” has more of the character of “thunderstruck”.  The word translated as “authority” also means “power” and “weight”.  This “authority” was not given to him by the Pharisees or the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem, in that he was “authorized” to teach, but his teaching possessed such force of wisdom as to stagger his hearers.  

“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are–the Holy One of God!”  The possessed man would have been well known to the community, and traveling rabbis may have have already attempted to exorcise the demon who held him captive.  Probably the townspeople would have simply let him wander around and go in and out of buildings such as the synagogue, leaving him alone as long as he left them alone.  Probably he wandered around the countryside too, sleeping out of doors, disappearing from the town for days or weeks at a time before returning, ever restless.  “What have you to do with us?”  The Greek here is nearly the same as the question Jesus asked his Mother at the wedding in Cana, except that it is, What to us and to you”, rather than, “What to me”.  The demon is mocking the Lord by turning his words around.  Perhaps the demon thought to bring up Cana as an affront to the Lord’s pride, in that Jesus had let a “mere” woman “push him around” after first refusing to do her bidding.  Perhaps.  The wedding at Cana would not have occurred very long before this.  The similarity in the Greek wording of both questions is very striking.  (The demon says “to us” because, as with Legion, several demons possess this man, a common trait in cases of this kind).

“Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are–the Holy One of God!”  To this point, Jesus has not performed any exorcisms.  He has, however, faced Satan and rebuked him and sent him away.  The devil, then, knew that Jesus possessed great power but he did not yet know what Jesus intended to do with it.  Note how the demon addresses the Lord: “Jesus of Nazareth . . . the Holy One of God”.  Only later will the demons address him as “the Son of God” and have an understanding of what that means.  “Have you come to destroy us?”  This reminds of the cry of Legion: “What have we to do with you, Jesus Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” (Matthew 8, 29).  The demons, long ago cast into hell, are already “destroyed”.  What they fear is the final judgment at the end of time, when their punishment will significantly increase even from its current intensity.  Jesus does not allow the demon to delay him: “Be quiet! Come out of him!”  Results follow immediately: “Then the demon threw the man down in front of them and came out of him without doing him any harm.”  The demon throws the man down as though contemptuously shedding or discarding him.  “They were all amazed.”  A better translation of the Greek would be, “Awe came over them.”  The awe resulted from the power Jesus exhibited in the exorcism.  The rabbis attempted exorcism in those days with potions, sacrifices, and long prayers — and failed, or their “successes” turned out to be failures soon afterwards.  Here, no doubt exists that the demon has been driven out of the man, and that by a single, simple command of the carpenter from Nazareth.

Both St. Mark and St. Luke, writing for Gentile Christians, present this exorcism as the first powerful work the Lord performed in public for all to see, and in this way they show that the Son of God has come to earth to break the power that evil had over the whole human race by his Passion and Death. 

Monday in the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, September 1, 2025

Luke 4, 16-30

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

We first notice in this reading that Jesus is in the synagogue on the Sabbath and is given a scroll to read.  Synagogue services were much less formal before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem than now.  On the Sabbath, the Jews would gather in a meeting wall where they would discuss the Law and the Prophets.  Visiting rabbis or scribes would be invited to speak.  Jesus, who has made a name for himself as a preacher, is asked to speak on this occasion.  Handed a scroll containing the prophecies of Isaiah, he looks for and finds the passage on which he would like to preach.  The passage the Lord quotes is from Isaiah 61, 1-2, although he may have quoted many verses beyond these: “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.”  Luke’s rearrangement of the order of events allows him to show that the first words we hear from the mouth of Jesus at the beginning of his ministry are these, and they act as the banner under which he will work until his Death, and under which his disciples will work after Pentecost.  These words, although coming from a Jewish prophet, speak not merely of the Jews but of all people: the poor, captives, the blind, and the oppressed.  Matthew provides an account of this event in very nearly the same words, but we can see how Luke frames it with the Greeks in mind.

“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”  The verb here translated as “fulfilled” can also mean “completed”, as though completing an action that was already begun.  We might think of the Prophet writing his words in faint pencil and the Lord coming along later and inking in the letters of those words with beautiful flowing color.  And the Lord did not simply “fulfill” the prophecy and then move on.  When Jesus touched the Jordan River at the time of his baptism, he changed it; it did not change him.  He entered it so as to render water capable of conferring eternal life, with the formula he would give his Apostles before his Ascension (cf. Matthew 28, 19).  This remained true even after he climbed up out of the water.  Similarly, when the Lord Jesus “touched” the bringing of glad tidings to the poor, proclaiming liberty to captives, and caring for the blind and the oppressed, he made our performing these actions, done for his sake, capable of making us like him.  His fulfillment of the words of the Prophet endures to the present time in us.

“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?’ ”  We see their divided opinion here.  The people — his neighbors and relatives — struggle to reconcile the Jesus they had known with the Jesus they had recently heard about.  This reminds us of how little we really pay attention to people as we run around, absorbed in the business of our own lives.  When we hear that an old friend or acquaintance has become a world-class athlete, or actor, or scientist, we wonder about it.  Thus, the synagogue crowd sees only two alternatives: either Jesus was a greater man than they had thought or he was a fraud.  And in their pride, they thought him a fraud.  

“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.”  The brow of the hill is some distance from the old town of Nazareth.  It would have taken quite an effort even for three or four men to carry a grown man out to it.  This, then, was not a sudden act committed in haste.  The crowd, or at least a large percentage of the crowd, had decided to kill him.  We might ask why they would want to do this.  What had he said that had inflamed them so that they wanted to commit murder?  Let us consider what he had said to them.  He had declared that he was the Messiah, the Anointed of God and that he had come to save the poor, captives, the blind, and the oppressed.  But if the Scriptures were fulfilled in their hearing, then he was identifying them as the poor, captives, the blind, and the oppressed, and that he, the son of Joseph the carpenter, had come to save them.  We should compare this to John 8, 33: “We are the seed of Abraham: and we have never been slaves to any man. How sayest thou: You shall be free?”  The Lord had told the Jews in Jerusalem that the truth would set them free, and they were outraged, and they sought to kill him then.  In both cases, the people did not want to hear the truth about themselves, a truth they secretly suspected but did not want to face, even to the point of killing the one who merely told it to them — and promised to help.

“But he passed through the midst of them and went away.” His hour had not yet come, and so he disentangled himself from them and walked away.  Perhaps as the people neared the brow of the hill their enthusiasm for their intended action sagged and they set him down.  And then Jesus, without a word, got up and walked away.  He would never return to his childhood home.  We see that Jesus invites all, speaks to all, but forces himself on no one.  When he is rejected he does not call down fire and brimstone, as two of his Apostles will want him to do later, but neither does he return, unasked.