The Poor as the Main
Recipient of Christ’s Good News of Salvation
(See Lk 4:18-19/Is 61:1-2)
Dear Sisters
and Brothers in Christ,
At the
beginning of His ministry, our Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed His mission
statement:
“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.”
“He has anointed me to bring glad tidings to
the poor”: Christ pointed out that His mission aims at bringing Good News
of salvation to the poor. In other
words, Christ has chosen the poor as His main listeners. This choice does not mean any discrimination
in Christ’s preaching of the Gospel because the poor include all who are
victims of social, economic, political and moral illness.
“He has sent me to proclaim liberty
to captives”: first, the poor are those who are
physically or morally imprisoned. Among
the prisoners serving their sentences, there are those falsely and unjustly
accused by the rich and the powerful. Justice
should be rendered for a better society.
Besides, there are those who are put into the prison of evil ambitions,
hatred and violence. They need the
freedom brought to them as the result of their determination to refuse sinful
life and to accept Christ’s teaching as the roadmap leading to new life
inspired with love, peace and joy.
“Recovery of sight to the blind”: second, the poor are those who
cannot see the truth. The blind are not
only those who lost their eyesight but also those who no longer have their
sense of responsibility for wrongdoing, and those who no longer see any sign of
goodness in people’s heart, not even the evidence of God’s loving and caring
presence in their life. They need the
light of the Gospel to be healed from blindness so they see how much God loves
and cares for the human race.
“To let the oppressed go free”: third, the poor are those who do
not enjoy full respect for their dignity as the human person, and whose basic
human rights are violated. Unlike
animals which need only food and satisfaction of their instinct, we human
beings need something greater such as love, justice, freedom, of which the
holiest is freedom to the worship of God.
Nothing can replace these human rights.
No one can deprive us of these sacred human rights because it is God Who
has granted us these human rights when He created us in His likeness as taught
by the Holy Bible.
The mission
of preaching the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ has been handed over to the
Church founded by Him to carry on the strong statement which we have listened
to in this Holy Mass celebration. This
statement brings us great comfort that we, the poor in different aspects, are
Christ’s audience of choice and it, at the same time, urges us, once anointed by
the Holy Spirit through the Sacrament of Baptism, to get involved in His task
of salvation, to take proper action to fulfill Christ’s mission as proclaimed
in Saint Luke’s Gospel today:
“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.”
Fr. Francis Nguyen O.P.
