Many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events which have been fulfilled in our midst, precisely as these events have been transmitted to us by the original eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word. I, too, have carefully traced the whole sequence of events from the beginning and have decided to set it in writing for you, Theophilus, so that your excellency may see how reliable the instruction was that you received.

Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee and his reputation spread throughout the region. He was preaching in their synagogues, and all were loud in His praise. He came to Nazareth, where he had been raised, and entering the Synagogue on the Sabbath, as he was in the habit of doing, He stood up to do the reading. When the book of Isaiah was handed him, he unrolled the scroll, and found the passage where it was written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Therefore he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, release to prisoner, to announce a year of favor from the Lord."

Rolling up the scroll, he gave it back to the assistant and sat down. All in the Synagogue has their eyes fixed on him. Then he began by saying to them, "Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing." (Luke 1:1-4; 4:14- 21)

What is another thing that we can see in this passage? an insight into Jesus as a person. He is a religious person, and Luke is very wont to portray Jesus as a religious, holy person. He is an observant Jew; it is his custom to go to the synagogue, and how often Luke places the activity, the teachings of Jesus within the synagogue, or within the Temple.

But there is something more here, and something deeper. Jesus reads this passage from Isaiah, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me." And of course earlier in this chapter, in Chapter 4, verse 14, Luke says, "Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee." And it's not the first time that we have seen the spirit. The first time that the spirit has come is at Jesus' baptism. And there the father says to Jesus alone (no one else hears it in Luke's gospel): "You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." This spirit--suddenly Jesus announces to humanity in that synagogue in Galilee that the spirit of God rests upon him. And why? so that he can bring glad tidings to the poor. So that he can proclaim liberty to captives. Recovery of sight to the blind; release prisoners; to announce a year of favor of the Lord.

But Jesus is no longer present among us physically, and therefore how does he continue to do that? How does he continue to be the anointed messenger, bringing good news to the poor, releasing captives, freeing those who are bound up, and bringing to those who are captive, freedom. How does Jesus do that? He leaves to the church, you and me, to do that. What Jesus did, he now continues to do, as Paul points out so well in the second reading. He now continues to do it through his body, the mystical body of Christ, which means you and me. I wonder if the world today would understand, I wonder if the world would be amazed, if suddenly the church said, "Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your presence." I wonder what the city of Spokane would say if this congregation said, "Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your presence through us, through the people sitting right here, right now in Mary Queen church.

How do we bring the good news to the poor, in our urban and suburban communities? I really don't know the answer to that, but I think we should ask ourselves the question, and begin to search for answers. Who are the poor, who are the captive? And who are the oppressed? We need to identify them, and often we don't have to look any farther than ourselves. Because all of us in a great sense are poor, are blind,l are captives, are oppressed.

What is needed in the world today is caring love for the immediate alleviation of people's needs. And again we need to identify those needs. They're not just financial, they're not just material. There are spiritual needs, there are needs of the spirit that are not spiritual in the sense of holy needs, but very much present. And how do we alleviate those? Also, we need to give attention to the changing social and economic conditions of our time that result in poverty, and the continuation of poverty of people. I heard on PBS not too long ago, that the International Monetary Fund was the greatest instrument in the world for the continuing poverty of the Third World. If that is so, it is a very sobering thought, and what are we going to do about it? What do we do about it?

And what the sad reality of our jails, our prisons, bulging, so many people we don't know where to put them. It's a sad commentary on American life that we are building prisons right in this state left and right, and we still cannot contain all of the people that society thinks belong there. What is wrong? Not in the building of prisons, but the fact that we have to build so many prisons, tat the population of prisons is just bulging all over the place. And again, are we asking that question?

What about the problems of violence? The front page of our paper today has a picture of domestic violence; it's increasing, it's getting worse. There are many victims of that violence, particularly children. How do we handle that? What about those social inequities of our society in which an appalling crime rate thrives (and it does thrive). What does the church--what do you and I--do about those things? Right now, you might think this is not related, but it is. Somewhat to the east of us, on two different stages, or perhaps on two different aprons of the same stage, there are dramas being played out, or one drama being played out, which gives us an insight into how people handle these things. In Washington, D.C., a certain political group, or certain political issues, whose moral values, even their attestation of family values, can be regarded as a bit hazy. Some might even say that they have the values closer to those of a macho alley cat, have been propounding certain positions and certain things, but hasn't changed the ultimate, the basic problems, needs of humanity. On another apron of the stage, in Cuba, there is someone who speaks from the wellfont of gospel values, Jesus' own values, with the request and a respect for human beings, all humans, on all levels of humanity. And yet how does this touch us, here, today, in Spokane, in Mary Queen Parish? What are we to do about this?

Shortly after I resigned as the abbot in office from our abbey, I was in residence at St. Basil's parish in Los Angeles, and one day one of the Assemblymen (as they call their Senators in California) came to every church in the city to talk about violence, to talk about crime, which was increasing geometrically. And the pastor of St. Basil's, Fr. Mescell, asked me to come to the Refectory to listen to the Assemblyman. And I listened, and of course it was the usual political jargon (I don't have much respect for politicians, by the way), that we need more law and we need more order. "And the way I see that, Fathers, is to increase the number of police in Los Angeles and to give them greater power." As I listened I became very uncomfortable. Fr. Mescell saw my discomfort and he asked me, "Well, Abbot, what do you have to say about this?" And I said, "Assemblyman, you're on the wrong track. You can put a policeman on every corner of every block. You can fill in the spaces on every street with policemen. You are never going to change society, you are never going to resolve the problems of society, until you touch the heart, and that's what you politicians refuse to do. And you can't change the heart, politicians, because it's out of your realm. It's out of your sphere of activity. And you have emasculated any possibility because of your insidious and diabolical concept of the separation of church and state. What you need to admit, Assemblyman, is that it is only in the churches where the heart of man can be formed. It is only in the word of God that the heart of man can be formed. If you change the heart, you change the behavior, and there is the solution. You must work with the churches, you must work for moral values, ethical values, that's the first thing that we need to do, is change our heart.

And the second thing, who are the poor? Who are the oppressed? Who are those who are in prisons? I'd like to end by reading to you a passage from a novel. This is a novel of a mother superior, a head of a school. And her niece has been involved, how shall I put it, she has a child out of wedlock; the niece is seeking refuge in the convent, is giving birth to the child, but is also in the process of dying herself.

Mother Radigan stood in Adrienne's room. It was light enough outside now to see without the lamp. She snapped it off, feeling safer in the sure light of morning. She did not speak to Adrienne, but when she had put clean sheets on her bed, moving her skillfully and gently in order to spread the sheets, when she had put a clean nightgown on her, she put her hand upon Adrienne's hands, not trying to move them from her face. She felt in these moments engulfing pity for Adrienne, for all the tragic inexplicable sorrow of life, its hate, its love, its irony. She felt, too, a kind of fierce admiration for the frantic, silent, endurance of pain, which this room had known.

Somewhere Mother Radigan had read of certain unrepentant souls in Hell, who having loved and misused life, hurling it away, scorning its treats and persuasions, now paid their debt in torment but in silence. She had ever since felt respect for them. She asked no questions of Adrienne, and Adrienne did not speak. Questions now which might probe into past moments of temptation and tenderness, of defiance of life. These questions seemed only a cruel and barren literalness. She wondered why she was not more frightened standing there. For all she knew, she was in the presence of death as well as of life. She was praying as she stood there, not that sin might be spared its bitter fruits, not that life might be quickened and restored, but that all humanity might learn to pity itself and thus to understand, might someday want above all else to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim deliverance to those that were captive, to open the prisoners to those that were bound.

Bound by what? thought Mother Radigan as she prayed the familiar lovely words in her mind. Captive in what prison houses? Bound by what chains? Not alone of the body, although those chains were stout and strong, working for good as well as for evil, for life as well as for death. The prisonhouses of the soul, she thought, these hold the strongest and most unrelenting chains. Not the chains of sense, not of those quick intuitive promptings which make someone love unwisely, perhaps pay its price, which link mind and hearts together in quick and responsive beauty, which leap in sudden miraculous moments to a knowledge of God himself; not these, but rather the chains of misbegotten thought, the chains of reason, of custom, even of education--the cruel chains which so often guarded one against a broken heart, fortified one against unhappiness, against the torture of the soul, which alone promise life.

It is the happy people of the world who are hard, thought Mother Radigan. If I could, she thought, I would have all my students know of this, understand it, weep for it. It is hardness, she thought, which is the unforgivable sin. It is the chains of hardness which makes captives of us all. It is from these that we must be freed in order that our hearts may break. The unbroken hearts in the world-- these build the prisonhouses of the soul.

I asked earlier, what does the church--what do we--you and I, because we are the church--do about these problems? The answer is, let Jesus change our hearts, because all of us are prisoners, all of us need liberation, all of us need freedom. And when we have experienced liberation, then we are willing and capable of helping other persons be liberated by that same power of Jesus.