7 January 2027 · Latin Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Syro-Malankara Rite · Syro-Malabar Rite · മലയാളം
“Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”” Luke 4:21
Jesus returns to Galilee “filled with the power of the Spirit” and goes to the synagogue of Nazareth on the sabbath. He is handed the scroll of Isaiah and reads: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” Then he rolls up the scroll, sits down, and says: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The Anointed One, the Christ, is standing in front of them. His mission is good news for the poor, release for captives, sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed, a year of the Lord's favour.
St John draws the consequence for us: “We love because he first loved us.” And he forbids a split between love of God and love of neighbour: “those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” Faith that is born of God “conquers the world”. St Raymond of Penyafort, a Dominican of Barcelona, compiled the Church's laws and was a great confessor; he helped found the Mercedarians, who ransomed Christian captives. He lived the programme of Nazareth: freedom for prisoners, mercy for sinners.
Theme: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
The Anointed One at Nazareth; love of God shown in love of neighbour.
“The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners;” Isaiah 61:1
““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,” Luke 4:18
Apply: Pray for those who are poor, captive or blind in our town.
“For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice!” Psalm 95:7
“Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”” Luke 4:21
Apply: Choose one verse from today's readings and live it today.
“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” Leviticus 19:18
“Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” 1 John 4:20
Apply: Make peace with one person this week.
The programme of Nazareth becomes our programme.
Today, not tomorrow, God's word wants to come true in us.
Take-home resolution: Do one work of mercy for a poor or imprisoned person this month.
Dear friends, Jesus returns to Galilee filled with the power of the Spirit, and on the sabbath he goes to the synagogue of Nazareth, as was his custom (Luke 4:14–16). He is handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
He reads: the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free (Luke 4:18). Then he sits down, and every eye is fixed on him.
And he says: today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing (Luke 4:21). Not one day in the future, not only in the past: today. The word of God is alive. When we hear it at Mass, Christ himself is speaking to us.
St John adds: we love because he first loved us. Those who say, I love God, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars (1 John 4:19–20). The programme of Nazareth, good news to the poor, freedom for captives, must become our programme.
Today we remember St Raymond of Penyafort, who helped ransom Christian captives and spent his life as a confessor, setting sinners free. May the word of God be fulfilled today in us, in love for the poor and in peace with our brothers and sisters. Amen.
Children, Jesus read from the Bible and said: today God's promise comes true! When we help the poor and are kind, God's word comes true in us too.
Lord Jesus, anointed by the Spirit, you brought good news to the poor and freedom to captives. Let your word be fulfilled today in my life, and teach me to love the brother and sister I see, so that I may truly love God whom I do not see. Amen.
John closes his long meditation on love with a blunt test: whoever hates a brother or sister cannot claim to love God. Luke brings us to the synagogue at Nazareth, where Jesus reads Isaiah and says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” God's love, shown to the nations at Epiphany, now has a programme: good news to the poor.
Setting.
The last part of John's meditation on love ties together everything he has said: love of God, love of others, faith in Jesus and obedience. It moves in a circle. Whoever believes is born of God; whoever is born of God loves him and those born of him; and such love shows itself in keeping the commandments.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“We love because he first loved us.” (4:19)
A note on the text. Many of the best manuscripts have no object: simply “we love”. Some others add “him” or “God”, and the Malayalam POC follows that sense (അവിടുത്തെ സ്നേഹിക്കുന്നു). Both are true. All our love, for God and for others, is a reply.
“for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” (4:20)
One who says he loves God has an easy claim to make, because God is out of sight. The person beside me is not. Love of God can be tested there.
“And his commandments are not burdensome,” (5:3)
John does not mean that it is easy, but that it is not a dead weight. It is lifted by the love of the one who commands and by the life he gives.
“And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith.” (5:4)
“World” in this letter means life organized without God. The small, wounded community is told that it has already won, through the faith by which it holds to Christ.
How the Church reads it.
Pope Benedict XVI explains that this verse does not set love of God and love of neighbour against each other: love of neighbour is a path to God, and closing our eyes to our neighbour makes us blind to God as well (Deus Caritas Est 16). The Catechism uses v. 20 in teaching the “forgive us” of the Our Father (CCC 2840).
Setting.
Luke places this scene right at the start of Jesus' ministry, and earlier than the visit to his home town in Mark and Matthew (Mark 6:1–6). He uses it as an opening programme for the whole Gospel. Jesus has come through the Baptism and the temptations, and returns “filled with the power of the Spirit”.
The quotation joins Isaiah 61:1–2 with a line from Isaiah 58:6. It ends before the words “and the day of vengeance of our God”. Today's reading stops at the admiration of the people; the question about Joseph's son and the conflict follow.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom.” (4:16)
He is a faithful Jew who keeps the sabbath and goes to the synagogue, and Luke says that it was his habit. Our own weekly going to Mass has its model here.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” (4:18)
This is the first thing that Jesus says about himself in public in Luke. The first people he names are the poor.
“The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.” (4:20)
Luke slows the scene down. He rolls up the scroll, gives it back, and sits, which is the posture of a teacher. Everyone waits.
“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (4:21)
It is the first sentence of his teaching in Luke, and it is the shortest of homilies. The Scripture is fulfilled not only in his person but “in your hearing”: the moment it is heard is the moment it acts.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that Christ opens his preaching of the Good News by making this passage of Isaiah his own (CCC 714), and that he is sent to the poor (CCC 544). The Second Vatican Council teaches that Christ himself speaks when the holy Scriptures are read in the Church (Sacrosanctum Concilium 7), and so v. 21 is true at every Mass. Origen tells his hearers that they too, in their assembly, can have the eyes of their hearts fixed on the Saviour (in substance, Homilies on Luke 32).
There is someone I cannot love; I still feel hurt and anger. Does this verse mean that I do not love God?
Love is not first a feeling. It is a decision of the will: to wish that person well, to refuse revenge, to pray for him or her. The Catechism says that it is not in our power not to feel or to forget an offence, but that the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory (CCC 2843). Bringing the hurt to God is already a way of obeying this verse.
Today the Roman calendar allows an optional memorial of St Raymond of Penyafort (died 1275), a Spanish Dominican priest. At the request of Pope Gregory IX he gathered the Church's laws into one great collection, and he wrote a well-known guide for confessors. His life is a reply to anyone who thinks law and love are enemies: in him, as in today's first reading, the commandments serve love.