3 January 2027 · Syro-Malabar Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Latin Rite · Syro-Malankara Rite · മലയാളം
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” Luke 4:18
Three days before the feast of Denha the Church already looks toward the Jordan, where the Spirit will come down upon Jesus. Today's readings speak of God the liberator and of those he sends. At the burning bush God tells Moses: “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them.” Then he sends a shepherd who protests, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh”, and who receives the only answer that matters: “I will be with you.”
Isaiah goes further. God calls a pagan king, Cyrus of Persia, his anointed, takes him by the right hand and says: “I call you by your name, I surname you, though you do not know me.” If God can use a foreign king to bring his people home from exile, nothing lies outside his reach. Yet Moses and Cyrus are only signs. In the synagogue of Nazareth Jesus unrolls 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 sits down and, with every eye fixed on him, says: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The true Anointed, the Mshiha, has come. The freedom he brings is freedom from sin and death, and it begins with the poor.
St Paul shows how this freedom reaches every generation. He reminds Timothy of the faith he received at home: “from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” Faith passes from parent to child and from teacher to pupil, and it holds firm through persecution. St Kuriakose Elias Chavara, whose feast falls today, lived this: a son of Kainakary who, like Moses, heard the cry of his people, and who asked that a school stand beside every church, so that every child might come to know the Scriptures and the way of salvation.
Theme: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
God hears, sends and anoints: from the burning bush to Nazareth.
“Then the LORD said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings,” Exodus 3:7
“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: Find one person in need this week and help them.
“He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”” Exodus 3:12
“And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:20
Apply: Take up one task you have been avoiding, trusting God's presence.
“I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the LORD, the God of Israel, who call you by your name.” Isaiah 45:3
“Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”” Luke 4:21
Apply: Read Luke 4:16–22 slowly before Denha.
“Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.” Deuteronomy 6:6–7
“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” 2 Timothy 3:14–15
Apply: Pray and read Scripture with your children this week.
The God of the burning bush has come down in Jesus, the Anointed.
St Chavara shows the fruit: faith handed on, the poor raised up.
Take-home resolution: Prepare for Denha on Wednesday with a family reading of the Gospel and a good confession.
Dear brothers and sisters, in three days we will celebrate Denha, when the Spirit came down upon Jesus at the Jordan. Today's readings prepare us by showing God as the one who hears, comes down and sets free.
Moses is keeping sheep in the wilderness when he sees a bush that burns without being consumed. From the fire God calls him by name and says: I have observed the misery of my people; I have heard their cry; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them (Exodus 3:7–8). Our God is not deaf to the cries of his people.
Moses protests: who am I that I should go to Pharaoh? God does not tell him how gifted he is. He says only: I will be with you (Exodus 3:11–12). That promise is enough for every mission, every vocation, every difficult task.
In Isaiah God does something more surprising still. He calls Cyrus, a foreign king, his anointed, and says: I call you by your name, though you do not know me (Isaiah 45:4). God can use anyone to save his people. But Cyrus is only a shadow. In Nazareth Jesus stands up in the synagogue and reads: the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. Then he says: today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing (Luke 4:18, 21). The true Anointed, the Mshiha, is here.
How does this good news reach us? St Paul reminds Timothy that from childhood he has known the sacred writings that instruct him for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:15). Faith comes to us through families, catechism teachers and parishes, from one generation to the next.
Today we also celebrate St Kuriakose Elias Chavara. Like Moses, he heard the cry of his people, the poor and the unlettered, and he answered by asking that a school stand beside every church. Let us ask for his spirit: to hear the cry of the poor, to trust the promise I will be with you, and to hand on the word of God to our children. Amen.
Children, Jesus went to the synagogue in his home town and read from the Bible: God has sent me to bring good news to the poor! Then he said: today it has come true.
St Chavara wanted every child to learn to read, so that they could know God's word. Let us read a little of the Bible with our family this week.
Lord Jesus, Anointed of the Father, the Spirit of the Lord is upon you, and you came to bring good news to the poor and release to the captives. You hear our cry as God heard Israel at the burning bush. Send us, as you sent Moses, with the promise that you will be with us; keep us in the faith we learned from childhood; and through the prayers of St Kuriakose Elias Chavara make our homes and schools places where your word is loved. Glory to you with the Father and the Holy Spirit, for ever. Amen.
Three days before Denha the readings already look to the Jordan. Each of them is about one whom God calls and sends. Moses, an exile keeping sheep, is sent to Pharaoh with the promise “I will be with you”. Cyrus, a foreign king, is called God’s anointed without knowing it. Timothy is told to hold on to the Scriptures he learned as a child. Then in Nazareth, Jesus reads from Isaiah in the synagogue of his boyhood and says that the anointed one is here, “today”.
So the Sunday moves from anointed figures who point forward to the Anointed himself. The key words are I have come down, anointed, continue and today.
Setting.
Moses has fled from Egypt to Midian (2:15), married there, and is keeping another man’s sheep. Meanwhile the Israelites cry out in slavery, and God hears them and remembers his covenant (2:23–25). The reader knows this; Moses does not. He is on an ordinary working day when the mountain of God comes into his life. Horeb is the name which some parts of the Old Testament use for Sinai.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.” (3:2)
Fire that does not destroy what it fills: this is the first thing Moses learns about the holy God.
“Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” (3:5)
The Catechism says that before God’s presence man discovers his own littleness; Moses takes off his sandals and veils his face (CCC 208). God draws him close and keeps him at a distance at the same time.
“I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings,” (3:7)
Four verbs in vv. 7–8 are the creed of Exodus: observed, heard, know, come down. God does not stand far from slaves. Then comes a surprise: “So come, I will send you” (3:10). God’s coming down takes the form of a man’s going.
“Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (3:11)
It is an honest question. God does not reply by praising Moses.
“I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.” (3:12)
This is a strange kind of sign: it can be seen only after obedience. The goal of the deliverance is worship, and that is fulfilled at Sinai (Exodus 19).
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism treats this scene as one of the primordial images of prayer: God calls first, and his call waits for an answer (CCC 2575), and it hears in it the God who reveals himself and is near (CCC 204–208). St Gregory of Nyssa, in his Life of Moses, sees the bush as a figure of the Virgin: the divine light shone from her without destroying her virginity (in substance).
Setting.
These verses speak to the Jewish exiles in Babylon, at the time when Cyrus II of Persia was rising to power. He took Babylon in 539 BC and let the deported peoples go home; the exiles were allowed to return and to rebuild the Temple (Ezra 1:1–4).
Cyrus’s own clay cylinder, found at Babylon in the nineteenth century and now in the British Museum, gives Marduk, the god of Babylon, the credit: Marduk took him by the hand and called his name. Isaiah uses the same kind of language for the opposite claim. It was the Lord, whom Cyrus did not know, who did this.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped” (45:1)
This must have shocked the exiles. Many commentators think that the next verses (45:9–13), about the clay that questions the potter, answer those who objected to it.
“so that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name.” (45:3)
“For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name, I surname you, though you do not know me.” (45:4)
Twice now God says “I call you by your name”. God’s plan does not depend on whether the instrument understands it. Cyrus’s success is not the point. The small, defeated people is.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism teaches that God guides history with care and carries out his plan by making use of his creatures, who do not always know it (CCC 303–308). The Church also recognises that God is at work beyond her visible limits, and that those who do not yet know him are not outside his care (Lumen Gentium 16). In this reading the title “anointed” is given only for a time and for a task. It prepares us to hear what Jesus claims for himself at Nazareth.
Setting.
This letter reads as the last testament of Paul, a prisoner who expects death (4:6–8), writing to his younger co-worker. The Church has received it among Paul’s letters. Many scholars today think that the Pastoral Letters come from a disciple writing in Paul’s name; others defend Paul’s own authorship. The teaching stands as inspired Scripture either way.
The list of places is not accidental. Antioch, Iconium and Lystra are the towns of Paul’s sufferings in Acts 13–14, and Lystra is where Acts first meets Timothy (Acts 16:1), so he may well have known those events at first hand.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.” (3:11)
Yet Paul is writing in chains. Rescue does not mean that suffering never comes, but that the Lord does not abandon his servant (compare 4:17–18).
“Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” (3:12)
This was true for Paul, and it remains true for those who suffer for their faith in many lands today. We pray for them, and for those who wrong them.
“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it,” (3:14)
Faith is received from people whom we can trust. Paul has in mind himself, and also a mother and a grandmother.
“how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” (3:15)
The Scriptures lead to salvation when they are read in faith in Christ. Note how today’s Gospel shows the same thing: a boy brought up in a village synagogue reads the same Scriptures.
How the Church reads it.
The Second Vatican Council urges all the faithful to read Scripture often, and it quotes St Jerome: “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” (Dei Verbum 25; CCC 133). The Church holds the Old Testament as an indispensable part of Scripture, whose inspired books remain permanently valid (CCC 121). The Catechism also reminds us that all must be ready to confess Christ before others, and to follow him on the way of the cross amid the persecutions the Church always meets (CCC 1816).
Setting.
In Luke, Jesus has just been baptized, and the Spirit has come down on him (3:21–22). He is “full of the Holy Spirit” in the desert (4:1), and he returns “filled with the power of the Spirit” (4:14). This scene at Nazareth is Luke’s opening picture of the whole mission, placed at the head of the public ministry. That is why the Church reads it as she approaches Denha.
A synagogue service of the time included the reading of the Law and the Prophets, followed by a word of exhortation (compare Acts 13:15). We do not know for certain how fixed the readings were at this date, and Luke’s wording, “found the place”, may suggest that Jesus chose it. The reading stops at v. 22a, at the moment of wonder, before the question and the anger that follow.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” (4:18)
The quotation is from Isaiah 61:1–2, with a phrase from Isaiah 58:6. Jesus stops before Isaiah’s next line, “the day of vengeance of our God”. Many commentators remark on this ending: the emphasis of this hour is mercy.
“The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.” (4:20)
Luke slows down and builds the silence. The reader is drawn into the room.
“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (4:21)
This is his entire sermon as Luke gives it. The scroll is about a person, and the person is standing in front of them.
“All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” (4:22)
“Gracious words” in Greek are literally “words of grace”. The Word made flesh speaks grace.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that Christ begins the proclamation of the Good News by making this passage of Isaiah his own (CCC 714), and that “the kingdom belongs to the poor and lowly” (CCC 544). Christ means the Anointed (CCC 436), and the Spirit’s anointing reveals his mission (CCC 438). Origen, in his homilies on Luke, says that the synagogue where all eyes were fixed on Jesus was blessed, and he asks that our assemblies also have the eyes of the heart fixed on him (in substance).
Why is this Sunday called a Sunday of Denha when Denha comes three days later?
The calendar this year counts the Sunday falling before 6 January as the first of Denha. Its readings prepare for the feast by speaking of the one God anoints and sends. Please check your local parish calendar, since arrangements can differ.
Was Cyrus a believer?
The text says twice that he did not know God (45:4–5). His own inscription credits Marduk. Scripture does not make him a convert; it says that God used him. God’s plan is larger than any ruler’s understanding of it.
Why did the people turn on Jesus at Nazareth?
The reading stops before that, at v. 22a. The verses that follow tell of the question “Is not this Joseph’s son?” and of a sharp conflict with his own townspeople. This is a matter of one town’s reaction in one hour, and Luke tells it as a warning to every hearer, including us, not as a judgment on a people.
The East Syriac year has moved from the Annunciation and the Nativity toward Denha, the rising of the light at the Jordan. Syro-Malabar Christians call our Lord Mishiha, the Anointed, in nearly every prayer. This Sunday shows what the word means. Moses is sent, Cyrus is used, and Timothy holds on to what he learned, but only one person can read Isaiah 61 and say “today”. When the Gospel is proclaimed in the Holy Qurbana, it is this same “today”: he is present, and his word is being fulfilled in our hearing.