August 31, 2026
Monday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 431
Reading 1
When I came to you, brothers and sisters,
proclaiming the mystery of God,
I did not come with sublimity of words or of wisdom.
For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you
except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.
I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling,
and my message and my proclamation
were not with persuasive words of wisdom,
but with a demonstration of spirit and power,
so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom
but on the power of God.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm
119:97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102
R. (97) Lord, I love your commands.
How I love your law, O LORD!
It is my meditation all the day.
R. Lord, I love your commands.
Your command has made me wiser than my enemies,
for it is ever with me.
R. Lord, I love your commands.
I have more understanding than all my teachers
when your decrees are my meditation.
R. Lord, I love your commands.
I have more discernment than the elders,
because I observe your precepts.
R. Lord, I love your commands.
From every evil way I withhold my feet,
that I may keep your words.
R. Lord, I love your commands.
From your ordinances I turn not away,
for you have instructed me.
R. Lord, I love your commands.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me;
he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
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.
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/083126.cfm
Commentary on 1
Corinthians 2:1-5
Paul continues to explain the basis on which he was
proclaiming Christ to the people of Corinth. When he first arrived among them
from Athens about the year 51 AD, he did not come as a polished orator with
convincing arguments. Perhaps Apollos, a Jewish exile from the sophisticated
society of Rome who became one of the leaders of the community, had led the
Corinthians to place more emphasis on eloquence and intellectual arguments.
Paul more than once acknowledges his weaknesses in this area. Was this the
“thorn in the flesh” which distressed him so much?
The only message Paul had to bring was that of Jesus Christ
and him crucified. On the face of it, it did not look like a very encouraging
message. This was not a message crafted to attract followers in large numbers,
especially given Paul’s acknowledged weakness as a persuasive speaker.
No wonder, then that he had come among them “in weakness and
in fear and in much trembling” (a common biblical expression), for he had none
of the eloquence which they might have expected and to which they were
accustomed from the intellectuals of the day.
All Paul had to offer was the persuasiveness that came:
…with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power…
He came to proclaim to them the “mystery of God”. ‘Mystery’
here is not so much something that is difficult to understand as it is a truth
which had previously been hidden but is now made known to those who are ready
to hear it. Greece at the time had its ‘mystery religions’, where the beliefs
of the religion were only made known to initiates, something akin to some secret
societies today. The ‘mystery’ here was the revelation about what God did for
us through the life, death and resurrection of God’s Son made man—something
that could never be discovered by the most sophisticated philosophers.
As Paul discovered in time, his deficiency was, in fact, his
strength. All he had to offer was his personal knowledge and experience of
Jesus as his crucified Lord and that was all that was needed. Paul was only the
fragile “vessel of clay” through whom God did his work. As a powerful orator,
the focus would have been more on himself and his arguments. His message
proclaimed that:
…your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the
power of God.
“The power of God” was clearly visible even in his
weaknesses.
What Paul says here is of great importance to us in
communicating our faith to others. There are those who try to convince
non-believers or those who have fallen away by piling on apologetic arguments
and proofs of God’s existence or the validity of the Church’s teaching. Ultimately,
though, the only really effective way to lead people to Christ is by the
sharing of our own experience of knowing him and by the witness of a life that
is clearly influenced by the vision of the gospel.
It is also consoling for us to realise that the success of
our evangelising does not depend on our own abilities. As Paul would say
elsewhere:
…whenever I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor
12:10)
It is not a matter of intellectual power, but of our
integrity, which allows God’s truth and love to shine through us.
At the same time, as one commentator reminds us, this does
not give preachers a licence to neglect study and preparation. Paul’s letters
reveal a great deal of knowledge in many areas of learning, and his eloquence
is apparent in his address before the Areopagus in Athens (see Acts 17:22-31).
Paul’s point is that unless the Holy Spirit works in a listener’s heart, the
wisdom and eloquence of a preacher are ineffective. Paul’s confidence as a
preacher did not rest on intellectual and oratorical ability, as did that of
the Greek orators. Our communicating of Christ and his vision to others will
also depend much more on the inner truth of our message than on our powers of
persuasion.
Commentary on Luke
4:16-30
Today we begin the reading from Luke’s Gospel, which will
bring us to the end of the Church year. We have already gone through Matthew’s
and Mark’s, and John’s Gospel has been spread through various parts of the
year, especially during the Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter seasons.
Luke’s Gospel is a companion volume to the Acts of the
Apostles, and the language and structure of these two books indicate that both
were written by the same person. They are addressed to the same individual,
Theophilus, and Acts refers to Luke’s Gospel. Luke’s Gospel and Acts could be
considered as volume 1 and 2 of the same book.
Luke presents the works and teachings of Jesus that are
especially important for understanding the way of salvation. Its scope is
complete from the birth of Christ to his ascension and it appeals to both Jews
and Gentiles.
Today, we take up Luke’s Gospel at the beginning of Jesus’
public life (chap 4). After his baptism by John the Baptist:
Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee…
(Luke 4:14)
As we know, Galilee is the northern province of Palestine
and his home province. Already people were talking about him everywhere.
Now, as our reading opens, we find him in Nazareth, the
small town in Galilee where he grew up. From the verses immediately preceding,
it does not seem that Jesus actually began his ministry in Nazareth. The event
described here may not have taken place until a year later. One suggestion (NIV
Bible) is that all that is described in John’s Gospel between 1:19 to 4:42
took place between the temptation in the desert and the moving north to Galilee
(see Luke 4:13-14).
But Luke has arranged the structure of his Gospel so that
Jesus will begin his public life in Nazareth, and will gradually proceed
southwards towards his goal, Jerusalem, without turning back. In the other
Synoptics, he moves around Galilee in all directions, and John suggests that he
made a number of visits to Jerusalem during his public life.
The Jerusalem Bible suggests that our
passage today actually combines three distinct parts:
- vv
16-22 Jesus is honoured: occurring at the time indicated by Matthew 4:13;
- vv
23-24 Jesus astonishing his audience: the visit of which Matthew and Mark
speak;
- vv
25-30 the life of Jesus threatened: not mentioned by Matthew or Mark and
to be placed towards the end of the Galilean ministry.
In this way Luke presents an introductory tableau which is a
summary and symbol of Christ’s great offer and of its contemptuous rejection by
his own people.
As the reading opens we find Jesus in the town synagogue. It
is a Sabbath day. He gets up to read the Scripture and comments on it. The
ruler of the synagogue could authorise any adult Jew to read the Scripture
lesson. The passage he reads is full of significance. It comes from the prophet
Isaiah, and Jesus’ reading of it amounts to a manifesto or what we might call
today a ‘mission statement’. ‘Books’ in those days were in the form of scrolls,
and the Scriptures were kept in a special place in the synagogue and given to
the reader by an attendant. Jesus may have chosen the passage himself or it may
have been assigned for that day.
But it is more than just a mission statement. As he reads,
it becomes clear that the whole statement is about Jesus himself:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…
This has already been confirmed during his baptism in the
river Jordan when “the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a
dove” and a voice was heard to say:
You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.
(Luke 3:22)
Next Jesus, still reading from Isaiah, says:
…because he has anointed me…
In saying this, he is making an unequivocal claim to be the
Messiah or the Christ, the long-awaited liberating King of Israel. The word
‘Messiah’, translated into Greek as Christos, means someone who is
anointed with oil (we call the oil in baptism and confirmation ‘chrism’). And a
person was made king by having oil poured over his head (remember how David was
anointed king). Jesus, of course, was not literally anointed, but had been
figuratively ‘anointed’ by the coming of the Spirit on him during his baptism.
‘Anointing’ is our equivalent of ‘coronation’, symbolised by the putting of a
crown on the new king.
Then comes the mission of this King:
-to bring good news to the poor,
-to proclaim release to the captives
-and recovery of sight to the blind,
-to set free those who are oppressed,
-to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
There is nothing here of restoring the glories of Israel,
nothing about conquering enemies and laying waste their lands. No, it is about
letting the poor of this world hear the Good News of God’s love for them. It is
about healing and reconciliation. It is about liberating those who are tied
down by any form of enslavement. It is about helping people to see clearly the
true meaning of life. It is about restoring wholeness to people’s lives and to
societies. It is about the inauguration of the Kingdom by its King.
It is, in short, the whole picture of Jesus that will unfold
in the pages of Luke, a Gospel which focuses on the poor and vulnerable, a
Gospel of tenderness and compassion, a Gospel of the Spirit and of joy, a Gospel
of prayer and healing.
It is about proclaiming “the year of the Lord’s favor”. This
refers to the Messianic age when salvation would be proclaimed. Isaiah, in the
original text, is alluding to the Year of Jubilee, when every 50 years slaves
were set free, debts were cancelled and ancestral lands were returned to the
original family. Isaiah was thinking mainly of freedom from Babylonian
captivity, but Jesus was speaking of liberation across the board of human
living.
As he finished the reading, Jesus put down the scroll and
said:
Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
And the townspeople who thought they knew him so well were
overawed by the wisdom with which he spoke. This positive reaction to Jesus is
a favourite theme in Luke.
Rhetorically they asked:
Is not this Joseph’s son?
But they were wrong. He was not Joseph’s son. He was the son
of Mary and of the Father, the divine Word sharing our ‘flesh’ (as suggested
above, this event may have occurred on a second visit).
And this in turn leads us to the third section of the
reading, which provides an unexpected turn of events and is more in harmony
with the later part of Jesus’ public life. Jesus’ hearers were surprised at the
way he spoke, but they were not moved to change. After all, he was ‘just’ the
son of Joseph, and someone they knew so well could have nothing to say to them.
At the same time Jesus says they, his own townspeople, must be wondering why he
is not doing the things in Nazareth that he was doing in places like Capernaum.
Capernaum, apparently a sizeable town, was where Peter lived
and Jesus made his house, the centre out of which he did his missionary work in
Galilee. A modern church now stands over the ruins of a 5th century basilica on
the supposed site of Peter’s house and there is a 4th century synagogue nearby.
The reason for the townspeople’s non-acceptance of Jesus is
that they do not really accept him for what he is. He reminds them that
prophets are seldom accepted in their own place. Familiarity blinds people to
their message. Their attitude was: “I know who he is and he has nothing to say
to me.” Jesus then gives two rather provocative examples:
- During
a great famine in the time of the prophet Elijah, Elijah was sent to help,
not his fellow Israelites, but a poor widow in Zarephath, near Sidon, in
non-Jewish territory. Sidon was one of the oldest Phoenician cities on the
Mediterranean coast and about 33 km north of Tyre. (Later, Jesus would
heal the daughter of a gentile woman here.)
- In
the time of the prophet Elisha, there were many lepers in Israel, but
Elisha was sent to cure Naaman, a gentile general from Syria.
God’s reaching out to Gentiles through his prophets sets the
stage for the Gentiles to receive the message of the Prophet Jesus, which is so
much a theme of Luke’s writings. These remarks so angered the people of
Nazareth that they dragged Jesus to the brow of a hill with the intention of
throwing him down, but:
…he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
Whether he did this miraculously or from the sheer power of
his personality is not clear. In any case, his time had not yet come.
Prophetic voices being rejected by their own is a phenomenon
only too common in our own day. And it was something Jesus foretold would
happen to his followers, simply for being his followers and proclaiming his
vision of life. In the meantime, let us make Jesus’ mission statement our own.
It is what being a Christian means.
https://sacredspace.com/commentary
Monday,
August 31, 2026
Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer
Almighty God,
every good thing comes from you.
Fill our hearts with love for you, increase our faith, and by your constant
care protect the good you have given us.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives
and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Gospel Reading - Luke 4: 16-30
Jesus came to Nazareth, where he
had been brought up, and went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day as he
usually did. He stood up to read, and they handed him the scroll of the prophet
Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it is written: The
spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the
afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord.
He then rolled
up the scroll, gave it back to the assistant and sat down. And all eyes in the
synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to speak to them, ‘This text is
being fulfilled today even while you are listening.’
And he won the approval of all,
and they were astonished by the gracious words that came from his lips. They
said, ‘This is Joseph’s son, surely?’
But he replied,
‘No doubt you will quote me the saying, “Physician, heal yourself,” and tell
me, “We have heard all that happened in Capernaum, do the same here in your own
country.” ‘And he went on, ‘In truth I tell you, no prophet is ever accepted in
his own country. ‘There were many widows in Israel, I can assure you, in
Elijah’s day, when heaven remained shut for three years and six months and a
great famine raged throughout the land, but Elijah was not sent to any one of
these: he was sent to a widow at Zarephath, a town in Sidonia.
And in the prophet Elisha’s time there were many suffering
from virulent skin-diseases in Israel, but none of these was cured—only Naaman
the Syrian.’ When they heard this everyone in the synagogue was enraged. They
sprang to their feet and hustled him out of the town; and they took him up to
the brow of the hill their town was built on, intending to throw him off the
cliff, but he passed straight through the crowd and walked away.
Reflection
Today we begin
the meditation on the Gospel of Luke, which will extend three months until the
end of the liturgical year. Today’s Gospel speaks about Jesus’ visit to
Nazareth and the presentation of his program to the people of the Synagogue. In
the first moment the people were admired. But immediately, when they become
aware that Jesus wants to accept all, without excluding anyone, people rebel
and want to kill him.
•
Luke 4: 16-19: The proposal of Jesus. Urged by
the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned to Galilee (Lk 4: 14) and begins to announce
the Good News of the Kingdom of God. He goes to the community, teaches in the
Synagogue, and arrives to Nazareth, where he had grown. He was returning to the
community, in which he had participated since he was small, and during thirty years.
The following Saturday, as it was the custom, Jesus went to the Synagogue to
participate in the celebration, and he stands up to read. He chooses the text
of Isaiah which speaks about the poor, of the prisoners, of the blind and the
oppressed (Is 61: 1-2). This text is an image of the situation of the people of
Galilee at the time of Jesus. The experience which Jesus had of God, the Father
of Love, gave him a new look to evaluate the reality. In the name of God, Jesus
takes a stand to defend the life of his people, and, with the words of Isaiah,
he defines his mission:
•
to announce the Good News to the poor,
•
to proclaim liberty to captives,
•
to give sight to the blind;
•
to release the oppressed, and taking the ancient
tradition of the prophets,
•
to proclaim “a year of grace from the Lord”. He
proclaims the Jubilee Year!
•
In the Bible, the "Jubilee Year” was an
important Law. Every seven years, at the beginning (Dt 15: 1; Lv 25: 3) it was
necessary to restore the land to the clan of origin. All had to be able to
return to their own property; and this way they prevented the formation of
large estates and families were guaranteed their livelihood. It was also
necessary to forgive their debts and to redeem the persons who were slaves. (Dt
15: 1-18). It was not easy to have the Jubilee Year every seven years (cf. Jr
34: 8-16). After the exile, it was decided to have it every fifty years (Lv 25:
8-12). The objective of the Jubilee was and continues to be to re-establish the
rights of the poor, to accept the excluded and to re-integrate them into the
society to live together with others. The Jubilee was a legal instrument to
return to the original sense of the Law of God. This was an occasion offered by
God to make a revision of the path being followed, to discover and to correct
the errors and to start again from the beginning. Jesus begins his preaching
proclaiming a Jubilee “A year of grace from the Lord”.
•
Luke 4: 20-22: To unite the Bible and Life.
Having finished the reading, Jesus updates the text of Isaiah and says: “This
text is being fulfilled today even while you are listening!” Taking the words
of Isaiah as his own, Jesus gives them a full and definitive sense, and he
declares himself Messiah who comes to fulfil the prophecy. This way of updating
the text provokes a reaction of discredit on the part of those who were in the
Synagogue. They were scandalized and do not want to know anything about him.
They do not accept that Jesus is the Messiah announced by Isaiah. They said:
“Is he not the son of Joseph?” They were scandalized because Jesus speaks about
accepting the poor, the blind and the oppressed. The people do not accept
Jesus’ proposal. And, thus when he presents the project of accepting the
excluded, he himself is excluded.
•
Luke 4: 23-30: To overcome the limits of race.
To help the community to overcome the scandal and to help them understand that
his proposal formed part of tradition. Jesus tells two stories known in the
Bible, the story of Elijah and the one of Elisha. Both stories criticize the
mental closeness of the people of Nazareth. Elijah was sent to the widow of
Zarephath (1 K 17: 7-16). Elisha was sent to take care of the foreigner of
Syria (2 K 5: 14). Here arises the concern of Luke who wants to show that
openness already comes from Jesus. Jesus had the same difficulty which the
communities at the time of Luke were having. But the call of Jesus did not calm
down people, all the contrary! The stories of Elijah and Elisha produced even
greater anger. The community of Nazareth reaches the point of wanting to kill
Jesus. But he keeps calm. The anger of others does not succeed in drawing him
away from his own path. Luke tells us that it is difficult to overcome the
mentality of privilege and of mental closeness.
•
It is important to notice the details used in
the Old Testament. Jesus quotes the text of Isaiah up to the point where it
says: “to proclaim a year of grace from the Lord”. He does not quote the rest
of the phrase which says: and a “day of vengeance from our God”. The people of
Nazareth throw stones at Jesus because he pretends to be the Messiah, because
he wants to accept the excluded and because he has omitted to read the phrase
about vengeance. They wanted the day of Yahweh to be a day of vengeance against
the oppressors of the people. In this case, the coming of the Kingdom would not
have been a true change or conversion of the system. Jesus does not accept this
way of thinking; he does not accept vengeance (cf. Mt 5: 44-48) His new
experience of God Father/Mother helped him to understand better the sense of
the prophecies.
Personal Questions
•
The program of Jesus is to accept the excluded.
Do we accept everybody, or do we exclude some? Which are the reasons which lead
us to exclude certain persons?
•
Is the program of Jesus truly our program, my
program? Who are the excluded whom we should accept better in our community?
Who or what thing gives us the strength to carry out the mission which is
entrusted to us by Jesus?
Concluding Prayer
How I love your Law, Lord! I ponder it all day long.
You make me wiser than my enemies
by your commandment which is mine for ever. (Ps 119: 97-78)
