GOSPEL REFLECTION, WEDNESDAY, 22ND WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, 2 SEPTEMBER 2026

Luke 4:38-44.  In Chapter 4 of Luke’s gospel Jesus begins his public ministry.  He has just been baptised and then tempted in the wilderness, and now his mission becomes clear.  He begins his ministry in Nazareth of Galilee, his hometown.  There he preaches and proclaims his mission to proclaim the Kingdom of God, which is the core of his teaching, his deeds, his  miracles, indeed in the very core of his life, death, and resurrection.  He is rejected in Nazareth of Galilee, but then he continues his ministry in Capernaum, also in Galilee, but a larger centre than Nazareth.  There he performs healing miracles to the preaching ministry he had already begun in Nazareth.  The first of the miracles took place in the synagogue at Capernaum with the healing of a man afflicted with an ‘unclean spirit.’  The healing was an exorcism of that spirit, who called Jesus ‘the Holy One of God,’ in other words the Messiah.  Jesus silenced the spirit, for it was for Jesus to proclaim who he was in the whole of his coming life and ministry.  The question here is what the unclean spirit meant by Messiah, and what Jesus meant by Messiah.  The spirit’s view, and that of his hearers, of the Messiah would likely have been one of an earthly saviour, a political revolutionary, in contrast to Jesus’ own teaching that ‘the Kingdom of God is within and among you,’ a spiritual rather than an earthly political reality.  After the healing in the synagogue Jesus went to the house of Simon (Peter), and there he healed Simon’s mother-in-law of a severe fever.  Immediately, many people hearing of Jesus’ healings  began to gather.  From now on, crowds gathered to hear Jesus’ preaching and to experience his healing power.  The two go together, words and deeds, as signs of the Kingdom already among us.

The Catholic Church teaches that salvation, and the Kingdom of God,  are already among us, but not yet in their full reality.  We must take note, because there is a tendency for people to assign them to an unknown future – definitely not yet.  We experience signs and unquestionable evidence of the Kingdom already among us in the words of scripture, in the sacraments, and in the loving presence God in our midst; ‘wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.’  In Jesus’ words and deeds God is truly present among his people.

A striking thing about Jesus’ healing miracles – all of them – is that healing is instantaneous.  We see that already in the healing of the man in the synagogue and in the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law.