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And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up: and, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto Him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And He closed the book, and He gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on Him. And He began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. And all bare Him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph’s son? (Lk. 4:16–22)
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit!
Dear brothers and sisters, in today’s Gospel we heard the words of the Evangelist Luke. While in Nazareth, Jesus Christ entered the synagogue, which was quite normal for a religious person of that time—to be in the synagogue on those days when it was prescribed by the very rhythm of life of every Jew to dedicate the day to reflection upon the word of God, upon Sacred Scripture; to dedicate it to the assembly of the people. And Jesus Christ, being young and a renowned teacher already, was invited to read from the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah. This is quite an honor for a man who is present in the assembly in the synagogue. He was to read a portion of the text and offer some teaching on it. And so Jesus Christ takes the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah and reads: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord (Lk. 4:18–19).
Through these words of the Prophet Isaiah, the Lord offers us a kind of program for His preaching—a program for the teaching that He preached to His own people. I’d like to focus on one line here: “to heal the brokenhearted.” We can understand this in two ways. On the one hand, they’re certainly addressed by the Prophet Isaiah himself to his fellow tribesmen, the Jews, who being in a covenant with God, that is, in a contract with God, constantly violated the promises made to Him. And they endured various and frequent sufferings for this, both within the country and from the outside, from the surrounding peoples. Therefore, the Jews were often left with nothing, and they only had themselves to blame. On the one hand, the Prophet Isaiah is of course speaking of his fellow tribesmen who were brokenhearted in the sense that they were under the yoke of their own oath-breaking and apostasy, constantly unfaithful to that faithfulness of God, that unchanging fidelity of God that was directed towards them.
But on the other hand, in the New Testament, these words acquire a slightly different meaning. “To heal the brokenhearted.” These words are addressed to everyone who believes in Christ. Let us recall the Gospel. To whom does the Lord address His preaching first of all? To the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He came to bring the Good News not to the righteous but to the sinful, to call them to repentance. The Lord speaks to the lowest strata of society, with which a respectable person wouldn’t even communicate. He communicates with Samaritans, who are considered heretics and with whom Jews shouldn’t have communicated. He speaks with publicans, with those who are collaborationists working for the Roman occupation authorities. Respectable people didn’t communicate with them either. He speaks with harlots, He enters the homes of sinners, He communicates with those who don’t fulfill the Law of Moses. On all these points, from the point of view of a right-believing Jew of that time, He has entered the assembly of the wicked, and therefore is Himself wicked. The Lord came to bring the true light to sinners, to the unrighteous.
What’s the condition for a sinner to be pardoned by God and accepted into His fellowship? Precisely the breaking of the heart. Fornicators, publicans, sinners, and many others who followed Christ had this distinctive mark. Yes, they had all sorts of things in their lives; yes, they had sinned a lot, but they had contrite hearts, a repentant disposition. Their hearts were softened, not callous. And the Lord healed them from their spiritual infirmities, and sometimes from physical illnesses.
Jesus and the Woman Caught in Adultery. Isaac Asknazy
This is precisely what the Gospel calls us to do—to soften our hearts to accept the Truth, to accept the Gospel, and, of course, to soften our hearts towards others. How often we have a dislike for those around us; how often we internally, if not externally, heap all our piling-up grievances upon them! “This is wrong, this is incorrect, you went the wrong way, you don’t speak right, you don’t stand right.” And so on, and so on, and so on. And through this our heart becomes hardened. We become coarse and carnal. Our interests don’t extend beyond the point of our own benefit or comfort.
And the Lord says: “The brokenhearted.” Those who realize that they themselves are liable to judgment, that they themselves are imperfect. Let us look within ourselves and we’ll see that we’ve stumbled many times in life, done many things wrong in life, that we’ve sinned. And many times, nothing happened to us for it. Many times, we were forgiven, we were shown mercy. Perhaps we were partially spared the punishment we deserved. But at the same time, when something happens against us, we often arm ourselves with our whole arsenal to strike back at the offender.
We would have this right if we weren’t under judgment ourselves. But we’re defendants, and therefore we have no right to judge others. If we want to be Christians, we have no right to such hardness of heart, rudeness, harshness, and lack of love for others. If we desire salvation, we must strive to acquire precisely these virtues, to soften our hearts, even despite what’s happening around us both in our inner circle and in the country and world. And if we come to this contrite state, then the Lord is able to heal us. We won’t accomplish our own healing through the Church, we won’t come ourselves and say that we have the Sacraments, that we’ll take all this now and do everything ourselves. It won’t work. The Lord will come and heal us only if we have contrition of heart, if we have humility, if we have the inner realization that without God we can’t do anything for our own salvation. And if we cultivate this feeling, this thought in our hearts, then we draw near to the Kingdom of Heaven. And we’ll be in the Kingdom of Heaven together with Christ and His saints.
Amen.
