C: 3rd Sun of OrdTime (27 Jan 2019) - SOCIAL BLINDNESS - Lk 4:1-4, 14-21

Today’s gospel presents Jesus as delivering his first public address. Male Jews may be invited in the synagogue to read a passage from the Scriptures. Jesus took this opportunity to read something that would summarize his mission on earth. Taking the book of Isaiah, he read an excerpt from Isa 61:1: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Lk 4:18). If we rundown the recipients of this divine favor in the text, we have four groups of people, viz., “the poor,” “the captives,” “the blind,” and “the oppressed.”

However, if we compare this quote with that of Isa 61:1, we can notice that there was no mention of “the blind”. Rather, the promise of eyesight to the blind is found elsewhere, i.e., in Isa 42:7. What happened in the Lukan reading was that Jesus inserted the phrase “the blind,” lumping it together with the misfortunate and marginalized persons. But why would Jesus fuse together as one collectivity the physically incapacitated and the socially deprived?

The more sensible reason for this is that Jesus was not referring to physical blindness, rather, he was probably pointing toward societal blindness.

There is a strong truth to this as most of the poor, the captives and the oppressed are often blinded from the objectivity of socio-political realities. We cannot fault them for possessing this limitation since their quotidian worry is centered on their earthly subsistence. They usually care less on who holds power, or whom they vote during elections. The more important question they constantly ask is how their families can survive for tomorrow. In contrast, the materially and economically blessed would be less anxious of their daily food and would have the luxury of time and resources to reflect on what is happening in the society. Sadly, after discovering what the malady of the society is, they strategize means on how to enrich themselves, widening further the gap between the rich and the poor, instead of helping the latter on how to be alleviated from their poverty.

Jesus, in our gospel, recognizes the social blindness of the poor, and sees to it that, not only will he liberate the socially marginalized, he will educate the poor as well away from their blinded socio-political ignorance, away from their blinded allegiance to sweet-mouthed politicians, away from their blinded populist sentiments, and away from their blinded desire to seek solely economic prosperity. He is equally challenging all of us to work together for the poor’s integral upliftment. And why should we do this? Opportunely, our Second Reading provides us with the appropriate answer: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ (1 Cor 12:12).”

In one of his earliest twitter messages (his twitter page was created in February 2012), Pope Francis @Pontifex 7/26/13 6:25AM tweets, “The measure of the greatness of the society is found in the way it treats those most in need, those who have nothing apart from their poverty.” It is, henceforth, the social responsibility of each and every one to not only help the poor, but to work together as one concerned society in eradicating poverty by proper integral education and good political governance. The poor are inaugurated as part of the Christian mission in today’s gospel. May we never forget them in our continuous social discernment.

- Rex Fortes, CM