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The Messiah will bring about justice and charity

Readings for Jan. 25-26, Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

By Fr. Jack Treloar, SJ | For On Mission

When Jesus reads from the prophet Isaiah, he chooses a passage that announces the job description for the Messiah. First, the prophet describes the type of person needed to fulfill the task of Messiah. 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” “He has anointed me.” Then Isaiah gives the job description of the Messiah. He will, “bring glad tidings to the poor . . . proclaim liberty to captives . . . [bestow] sight to the blind … let the oppressed go free and … proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” 

Then Jesus makes a radical, personal claim. “I am the person who fulfills this job description.”

The Messiah must come directly from God with a special anointing. In our contemporary way of talking, he must have certain credentials before he can even be considered for the job. Here, he claims that he has been sent directly from God. He also has had distinctive training or “anointing” that will allow him to accomplish the requisite tasks appropriate to the position of Messiah.

He will bring glad tidings to the poor. In all ages and times, the poor have reason to despair because of the various needs they experience during their lives. Where are we going to sleep tonight? Will we have something to eat? How can we take care of the baby? 

The Messiah announces his time is designed to make sure that such needs will be met. There are also many spiritual needs such as learning of God’s love especially for the poor ones in our world.

Many people are captives. Some captivity is physical, such as punishment for wrongdoing. The Messiah will bring about justice and charity for such afflicted people. Some captivity is psychological and spiritual, such as addictions, psychoses and neuroses. The Messiah will bring healing to these people.

And then he brings sight to the blind — not only those, like blind beggar Bartimaeus, who experience physical blindness — but also those who experience non-physical blindnesses. The person who has lost their faith will come to see God once again. The person who struggles with psychiatric disorders will find peace for their life.

In our own time, we are quite familiar with oppression of many types; it is part of the Messiah’s role to free people from oppression. When the powerful and the strong take advantage of the little ones of the Lord, the Messiah will bring about justice and truth.

In some sense, each of these Messianic tasks comforts individuals who experience weakness. The weak and the poor are especially loved by the Messiah for it is only in weakness, poverty and need that God has an opportunity to heal. 

It is a tragedy when we fail to acknowledge the needs in our lives. When we take the attitude that, “I can do it myself,” we leave no room for God to work. We deny our necessity for a Messiah, for a savior. We fail to recognize Jesus’ power in our own time.

Fr. Treloar is an assistant director at Jesuit Retreat House in Oshkosh and has served as a professor, lecturer, author and academic administrator. 

The readings for Sunday, Jan. 26, can be found at Third Sunday in Ordinary Time | USCCB.

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