Heralds of Divine Healing!

Monday, September 1, 2025

1 Thess 4:13-18; Lk 4:16-30

Today’s Gospel invites us to be heralds of Divine healing.

In the Gospel, we find Jesus making a return to his hometown of Nazareth. At the synagogue, Jesus finds himself surrounded by familiar faces, family, and friends. Though the setting looks friendly at the beginning, very soon it turns hostile when Jesus confronts their disbelief through examples from scripture. 

While his hometown visit gave Jesus only a bitter memory, we need to unpack the real meaning of Jesus’ words and his people’s response. 

1. Jesus’ preaching at the synagogue demonstrates that he came with words of healing and liberation. As such, the scriptural statements are also a declaration of his purpose. His preaching summarizes the purpose of his coming and the objective of his mission. This is why his relatives found those words ‘gracious.’ However, all is not well when Jesus senses their disbelief, as evidenced in their comment, ‘Is this not the son of Joseph?’ Though they loved what Jesus preached, they could not accept the fact that it came from the mouth of someone whose father was a carpenter and whose mother was an ordinary homemaker. 

2. The crowd’s reaction to Jesus’ preaching shows that, unlike Jesus, his own people came with words of disbelief and derision. Indeed, there was awe and wonder in their reaction. However, it also reeked of derision and suspicion. That is when Jesus challenges their smug and righteous attitude and comes up with scriptural examples that prove God’s inclusive love with no pretension to exclusivity. When Jesus shows that God’s mercy is for all, they feel that he crossed all the boundaries of their expectations. Thus, they rejected Jesus, though he came with words of healing to that wounded society. 

Words have power. Jesus employs them to heal and transform, though such goodness is not honored enough, much less despised. 

More often than not, our words too echo Nazareth’s crowd rather than Jesus’ compassion. 

Like Jesus, we are called to proclaim God’s healing to all. Our words must be spoken in truth and love. 

Let us pray that we speak like Jesus with purpose, mercy, and love.

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar