Today’s Gospel reading gives us Our Lord teaching in the synagogue at Nazareth, where He quotes this passage from Isaiah: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord’.

His hearers are amazed, for to them He is merely the son of Joseph, the carpenter. He has spent thirty years in hiddenness, and emerges for His Baptism, and the forty days in the desert.

In our own consciousness, may we become ever more aware of Him in the unexpected events of our lives. A listening silence is what is asked of us … may God bless you in this.