Homily

Today’s liturgy brings us at the very beginning of the Gospel according to Luke. It is an invitation for all, an affectionate and tender proposal: for those who have already read it so many times, for those who have never opened it, for those aware of how much they need to know it. Hearing it and reading it helps us to understand the true meaning of our life, that is, the vocation to which each one of us is called. To again take up the Gospel may seem insignificant to a generation that consumes words and situations easily, that emphasizes them, in the voracious search for the new, because it is so reluctant to go in depth. To always read the same Gospel is the discipline of the wise person who knows how to draw from his treasure-house new and old things. At times it seems to repeat what is already known, but with time and with the toil of the heart we discover the meaning and we grasp what it is asking today. How useful it is to establish a regimen, each day, of having a time to read the Gospel and pray! It is an invitation this Sunday in which we hear those opening verses at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel which are not usually proclaimed. Let us read the Gospel so as not to reduce everything to ourselves, and in order to find the heart, feelings, forgiveness! Let us read it in order to have that strength that went out from the body and words of Jesus; so that the tempest of the world finds the calm after the storm in that word which today tells the wind and the sea to calm down.
Nazareth is the first stop along the path that the evangelist records. Here Jesus gives his first sermon. It is Saturday and, as was his custom, Jesus goes to the synagogue. During prayer in the synagogue, any Israeli adult could read and comment on Scripture. That day Jesus comes up and the minister offers Jesus the scroll of the book of the prophet Isaiah opened to the passage we heard today, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
Upon finishing the reading, Jesus closes the scroll. All had their eyes fixed on him, and the expectation is great. As far as one can infer from the Gospel, Jesus had never made himself noticed in Nazareth; he had never pursued rabbinical studies, nor had he ever done anything extraordinary. Only toward the last of his years had people heard that he started preaching in other Galilean towns. This is the first time he preaches in Nazareth. What will he say? In the first reading today, the liturgy, as if to force us to join the gospel scene, invites us to listen to the ancient assembly of the people of Israel gathered around the priest Ezra, “For all the people wept, when they heard the words of the law.” They wept because finally the Lord had returned to gather them and to offer them hope for a more beautiful life. They were no longer an abandoned people, without hope, without words. The hope that the Lord would visit the world was lit up in them.
Jesus rolls up the scroll and lays it down. He sits. All are staring at him with great attention, says the evangelist as he makes us live again the experience of those hearts suspended between listening and expectation. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus does not comment; he fulfils. “Today.” Hope is no longer a distant dream, a probability, indefinite, as if it were reduced to a way of better enduring the difficulties of the present. Time does not run anymore without a direction. After the event in the synagogue of Nazareth, we can all help the Lord so that the Gospel can be fulfilled for all. “Today” I come to visit you! “Today” I begin to say those words of love that I no longer know how to pronounce or which have always remained inside! “Today” I go beyond rancour, fear, judgment; “today” I choose to be generous, I change my attitude, my face. “Today” I ask pardon of those I have offended or betrayed. “Today” I help you, poor person who asks for and needs everything. “Today” we want the sick of Africa to find the cures which an unjust world wants to deny. “Today” we can help people leave the bitterest prisons of loneliness, oppression, violence and war. Let us not postpone until tomorrow because of laziness, fear or a foolish optimism. Today we lift our eyes and see the fields which are already ripe. Let us open the eyes of the heart and believe in love, the power of the Lord, which he gives to his own, and the hope of the poor and of the oppressed. It is the 'today' of God that never ends.
Every time the Gospel is proclaimed, as on this day, the “today” of God is fulfilled, the “today” of liberation, the “today” of celebration, the “today” of the Gospel. Every time the Gospel is opened we should hear, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The “today” of God enters our hearts, our days, even if everything going on around us compels us to not believe in anything, to resign ourselves to the unavoidable, and to think impossible this extraordinary “today.” We, on the other hand, believe that the 'today' of the Lord –that feast of which we heard in the first reading– arrives for every man and woman, in every place of the earth, even in those in which it seems most impossible.