In today’s gospel, Luke quotes the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. He would have been familiar with Isaiah and he wants to connect Jesus with Isaiah, implying that Jesus, too, was a prophet.

The passage Jesus read (he’s at a synagogue service, similar to what we are doing in this 1^st part of the Mass) is familiar. It is often used at ordinations of priests, again implying that priests are to be prophets- like Isaiah and like Jesus.

These are the elements of that passage: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me.” Priests are ordained by two elements: the bishop lays hands on the person and all call upon the Holy Spirit- in a lengthy prayer. “By the laying on of hands and the invocation of the Holy Spirit.”

The next elements of Isaiah are (job description)

1) to bring glad tidings to the poor, a constant theme of Pope Francis. What do the poor want? Not precisely money, but a decent life. Poverty takes many forms, even rich people lack something preventing them from a full life.

2) liberty to captives. We have a judicial system not entirely perfect, but better than most. At least we try to do justice. But, again, there are other kinds of captivity, e.g. wrong behavior, or addictions, etc.

3) recovery of sight to the blind. Modern medicine (glasses, operations, etc.) allow many of us who would otherwise be physically blind to see. As a  metaphor, blindness can also be a refusal to see the big picture or not to listen to what others are saying by sticking to one’s own predictions.

4) let the oppressed go free- one example is the treatment for over 60 years of the Palestinian people. There are also other kinds of oppression, e.g, unjust laws, bullying comes to mind as well.

5) proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. Every 7 years, Jubilee (or 50 years) to let the land be fallow so that the earth isn’t depleted. Ecology is a major issue today since we are rapidly depleting resources.

This, then, is a description of the job priests are ordained to do. It is, frankly, an unpopular job when done because somebody is going to be upset. Even a dangerous job- priests are killed rather regularly, especially in oppressive countries.

But not meant for priests alone. Everyone is called to upset others who are doing harm.

1^st reading from John: “If anyone says they love God but hates another, he is a liar.”

The three short letters of John are beautiful almost poems about loving one another

Remember- written c. 2000 years ago. When you have to say to someone: love one another it’s because they are not. Much as my mother would say to us three kids, don’t fight. Its because we were fighting. So, things haven’t changed much in the last two millennia- people (even Christians) are not loving one another.

Best way to counter that is to actually practice what every priest is supposed to do. Can’t make someone do something like that except by example.

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