The first reading is about the homecoming of the Jews after years of exile in Babylon. Transformed by the experience, the Jews weep with joy. In the Gospel, Jesus reads Isaiah and declares the text fulfilled that very day; that he is the Messiah; that His mission is not temple-centred but prophetic; that the people He is addressing are mostly outcasts and not those in the temple. In contrast with the prevailing religion of the priests and scribes who sought merely to perpetrate their own power stuctures over the people, Christ's message is one of freedom. Disilliusionment and void mark those times and also the present. The remedy is in the Scriptures; reading the Bible, rediscovering the word of God will make us go back to the real source of spiritual health and transform us through the Spirit that liberates and empowers.
